I resolve to think twice, no three or four times before I order even one more teeny, tiny rose. I know, I've promised that many times before but new year resolutions are serious stuff. Right? Aren't they?

Ingrid

I'm not going to buy an unhealthy rose just because I happen to stumble across it and want it.

Several times last year I found roses on sale that I I've tried to nurse back to health; but the price became abundantly clear while pruning this weekend just how poorly structured and sad these roses really are.

From now on I'm buying the healthiest plants possible from the best sources I can find.

... Duh.

Every time I see a photo like the one Jon posted to the Felicia-in-shade thread I'm reminded of how much my collection of roses lacks a sense of wholeness as a garden. So my 2008 garden resolution is to put more thought and care into the finer points of garden design, edging treatments, etc., and especially the selection and placement of companion plants, which has been impulse driven and haphazard to date. The roses are doing well and I'm happy with their placement for the most part, but they aren't being shown off to their best advantage.

I'm going to avoid the box stores with their bagged roses...I tend to get lured into these, although last year I think I avoided them.

Also, I'm going to share my roses with others. I had delayed inviting folks over because I didn't think the gardens were "ready" enough...but, as I walk through them, I'm amazed at their beauty...there will never be a perfect time...

Robert

Design is my new mantra. I'll make structures and yet more structures for both climbers and tall shrubs. I will think more about companion planting and put in more of it, especially leafy plants with a strong impact. I'll try to avoid spottiness and not fall for every pretty flower that will add nothing to all the other pretty flowers dotted around the garden. I shall never plant less than 10 plants of anything, except the odd architectural specimen. I hope.

I am going to try to plant right away and not let my pot getto build up.

Lisa

This is the 1st year DW has given me the green light to buy more roses for several years. I still haven't recovered from the shock!

I wonder if she is well? I kind of enjoy my little game of weasling a few new roses into our garden. I will have to find another way of irritating her. OTOH just wait until she sees a few bills come in on the charge cards! Hee Hee!

Foghorn
NAGL

I would like to think that I might get the drip system in better order this year and earlier in the season. If I don't I get caught up in watering to extent that there is no time to work on the drip system.

My resolve is just to work at the overall design and generally just do better, weed more, stay on top of things work on unifying my plonk beds. I think I am resolved to make it more beautiful.
la

To get my drip system installed.

Carla

I don't want to upset anybody, but I am committed to spraying fungicide every two weeks this spring until mid-June. I'm normally a very lazy sprayer--put it off as long as possible--often forget--and then suddenly I have a BS problem! Usually I don't mind operating that way, but my garden will be on the city garden tour mid-June, and I don't want to be caught with spotty roses.

After mid-June, I promise to return to my lazy, haphazard ways--which means I might get around to spraying a couple times in the fall--and that's about it.

Wish I had a more uplifting New Year's resolution. LOL

Kate

I resolve to spend more time in my garden, enjoying it. I got a wireless connection for the laptop so can be on my computer outside, LOL! I have plenty of benches - this year, I'll actually sit in them! What a concept! I resolve to encourage friends to drop by, and not be paranoid about how things look.

I also resolve to keep the roses on archways under control, so that they look like arches, and you can actually walk under them. Also to keep roses and other plants from blocking the paths.

Finally, I resolve to do as I did this year, and drop everything to go visit other people's gardens. So much fun, you learn so much, and it's much easier to relax in a garden that is not yours!
Anita

I resolve not to try and grow a vegetable garden which I won't be able to maintain and will feel guilty about. This will free up my time to take proper care of my roses--they are where my heart is anyway!

I resolve not to buy any more roses on impulse just because I see one ravishing picture.

Colleen

In 2008, I hereby resolve to ...
1. Move all those plants that I stuffed in awkward, wrong, inane spots (the ones that just had to come home with me from the 50% off Fall sale, then sat around in pots for a couple weeks before I finally threw them into the ground in a mad planting frenzy).
2. Convince DH to take out a tree so my supposedly full sun bed can become truly full sun - and why not expand it just a teeny tiny bit while we're at it?
3. Divide my overgrown hostas but not break my back - or my shovel - in the process.
4. Focus on what I've already got, and resist the urge to buy more plants, except for ones with pink, red, peach, white and yellow blooms ...oh and purple and blue too...but definitely no orange ... except maybe...oh, heck, scratch that resolution off the list.
5. Shovel prune a couple of stunted, diseased specimins taking up valuable real estate, despite the fact that once a year they do manage to throw out a pretty bloom.
6. Erradicate my garden of the following malicious creatures and mortal enemies: deer, ground hogs, japenese beetles. If erradication fails... meditate daily on the myriad benfits of peaceful co-existence with all God's ceatures.

Lisa

What I'm doing different:
Not order bare root roses right before a hot spell.

Buy more trash cans to collect rainwater.

Get more horse manure.

STart looking for sales now on last year's fertilizer, like Rose Tone or Holly Tone. (found some great deals last year about Jan-Feb)

Order alfalfa early. ( took a long time to get last year)

Sink some big pots in areas with root competition and plant in those.
Linda

My big garden resolution this year is not to get too scattered and try to do everything. I love plants of many kinds, and have been adding more and more food gardening to the ornamental gardening I have already been doing. This New Year I made a decision not to go too far with that. I'm still going to plant a few more fruit trees and a small plot of favorite heirloom vegetables for the sheer fun of it, but I'm not going to try to grow all our own produce. We just joined a CSA. Now I will still have time for my first love, the roses and other flowers that fill my front garden, and yet have all the locally grown organic vegetables we can eat.

I simply cannot tell you how much stress that takes off my shoulders.

Rosefolly

I don't really make resolutions, but I have plans.

1. I am going to begin killing off the elms that border the garden. I know this sounds mean and destructive, but they have incredibly invasive roots and have strangled and nearly killed a number of my plants, and the possibilities for peaceful coexistance with them are nil. Meanwhile we continue busy planting acorns and all the oak and flowering ash seedlings we stumble across (young nursery-grown trees we tried all died) to replace the terrible elms, and keep and enlarge our strip of woodland. We have a lot of four-inch tall oaks, while the ashes grow faster and are excellent trees. We need trees in general and work at getting more going in our difficult ground.

2. Pruning my roses harder. They're a few years old now and ready to have their oldest canes removed. I tried hard pruning on 'Louise Odier' last year and was really pleased with the results. Also a couple of flourishing Teas just need to be reduced in size, and the Noisettes will be more floriferous with harder cutting back, I do think. I really want a good flowering from my lovely 'Duchesse d'Auerstaedt'.

3. Continue digging the worst garden ground. The Rose Road and the Biscione: heavy compacted stony clay and pure clay respectively. Two to three years of heavy mulching have finally improved the ground to the point that I can get a shovel into it. So I pull out a shovelful of dirt, clean it of Bermuda grass roots (greatly weakened by the mulch), wild onions, and bindweed roots, and layer it back again with hay, compost, and whatever other organic matter I can find. I think healthy pruned-off canes are going to go in the bottom.

4. Keep an eye open for disease. I don't mind blackspot and mildew, and haven't seen rust, but I am seeing two worrisome illnesses. One is a canker (?) that forms on canes at joints, and I'm not sure how dangerous it is. The other caused rapid die-back of whole canes and has killed a couple of plants, caused heavy damage to a couple of others, and shown up on still others. For now I'm watching. These are new problems for me.

5. I'm still thinking about a large order of shrubs and ornamental trees from a nursery in Rome that has a most delicious catalog. I wanted to get all our new plants in the ground by Christmas, and succeeded with the three rose orders (hurray!), and these would be late. However, we are having a decently wet winter so far, thank Heaven. The last two years have been very dry.

6. Take more cuttings of aromatic sub-shrubs: lavender, thyme, sage, etc. They root easily and I need them in abundant quantities.

7. Figure out a way to supply a more humid environment when summer comes for my cuttings rooting in pots and my 'jungly' Sansevierias.

Melissa

1.) My first and most important resolution is not garden- related but effects gardening more than any other plan I can make. It is to exercise regularly to get well despite various ailments so I can work in the garden much more and more regularly than I was able to do it last year. (It is obviously not a question of resolution to get rid of spinal problems and severe arthritis but gaining more strength despite these ailments and coping with them might be.)

2.) Get back to the regular 14 days spraying schedule (provided the first resolution works).

3.) Be more determined in shovel pruning, getting rid of those roses that are weaklings, too disease prone or just simply boring. Every year I SP 1 or 2 roses but I should be far more radical in using the shovel than I had been in the past. (Regrettably this partly depends on DH who vetoed the removal of several roses in the past while he happily weeded out perennials I mail ordered from various online nurseries as soon as I wasnÂt around)

4.) Avoid building up a pot ghetto and reduce the existing one  obviously this resolution is contingent on keeping resolution 3.

5.)I didn't make any resolution as to "no more rose orders" because that is a guarantee for failure.

Root more cuttings of my favorite old roses, rather than looking for new varieties to order.

Randy

Not to leave my garden clippers outside.
promise it will be clippers & me when I go back inside
the House. Carry a bucket as I pull weeds, not stuff them in my pocket or just throw them !! Oh ! and wear my gardening shoes ! that are right their by the door ! and give up on buying any Hostas.
olga,

I will mostly be in maintenance mode this year. I planted a large area in native wildflower and grass seeds this winter and that is going to take weeding and watering. I do want to learn to propagate roses and other woody shrubs from cuttings. I tried one method from hardwood cuttings last winter with minimal success so intend to try semi-hardwood cuttings this year and see if that works better.

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden blog