Invigorate Your Garden with Some New Year Ideas

As winter still rules out there with ice, snow and frost, don’t be fooled about the run of time. The days will soon become longer, and the sun stronger, meaning that you can perhaps start digging and changing from February/March onwards. It is a frustrating time, but instead of sitting and waiting for better weather conditions, you can always sit down and put some ideas on paper. And once you’ve planned things properly, you’ll know what materials you need, and what time schedule you’d have to set up.

At the start of the New Year, we are also in our most creative phase: we always have some new ideas, and want to make some useful changes in the New Year. So pick up on your New Year ideas, and put them into practice. This is how you can do it:

1) Garden design: Go through the layout of your existing garden and ask yourself: what works and what doesn’t. Take some notes about things that don’t work and try to figure out why they don’t work (for instance: the patio – it is too small, and therefore doesn’t work). Then make a sketch of how you’d like to change it – give it a bigger size, a new shape or renew it entirely. If you need a contractor for this type of work, you can already pass your sketch with approximate dimensions on to them, and ask for a quote. If you’d like to do it yourself, derive the list of materials and a time schedule from your layout. Once decided, put it directly in your main calendar.

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You may also want to review paths, plantings, edgings, bedding, etc., with which you basically proceed in the same way.

2) What to grow? Make a list of plants you’d like to grow in your garden. You can buy the seeds directly from this list. From the seed bags, take the information on when and how to sow, to plant and to harvest. Add this information to your list, which then turns it into a planting schedule. If you want to be hyper-organised, you can now put this information in your main calendar, and you’ll know exactly what to do when.

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3) Soil improvements. Where are sections in your garden, where the soil needs to be replenished? Identify the areas and their size, and calculate, how many bags of soil improver, compost, grit, sand, manure, etc. you need to buy. Schedule dates for these works, that should be at least 4 weeks before the first sowing or planting in these areas.

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4) Create beds. Modify existing beds to your desire and/or arrange for new beds. Sketch them out, take measurements and evaluate the materials you need including their dimensions and quantities. Plan the works in such a way that they are completed at least 6 weeks before sowing or planting.

Image via nojunecleaver.

Now sit back and wait until the first reminder pops up in your calendar, and then start to get things changed your way. Organisation is key if you’d like to maximize the effects of your New Year Ideas for the garden.