Six top gardeners share their new year’s resolutions for 2022

1. Over the January break: review the ideas kindly provided by Instagram followers in response to a couple of callouts for ideas for super-tough plants for the verge (an area that is particularly challenging) and also for tough true red flowers for the gravel garden.
2. Over summer: continue reducing water usage while monitoring the plants and toughening them up.
3. Over the coming years: get out in the garden more. I have been particularly time-poor this year, but pottering around is one of the things I most enjoy.

Leon van Schaik, Emeritus Professor of Architecture at RMIT University and author of Doing, Seeing; Seeing, Doing

This year it dawned on me that my new-to-me garden is a garden of layers, a series of theatrical drops or picture planes. One axial path drives straight up through the planes. Other paths wind up the gradients between the drops.

I spent the winter doing regenerative pruning, bed renewal, mulching and planting, all with the aim of emphasising the series of planes. I also had five structures built – three tall pyramidal climbing frames and two smaller white tripods, one with a bird box – and a new bridge that leads to the meandering path up the hill. Spring was a revelation, blossom marching up the hill. I planted several more trees, moved roses, augmenting the structural idea.

The New Year? Enjoy the garden with family and friends. Watch what summer does, fill gaps, prune in more vistas, compost, prepare for the next planting season.

Stephen Ryan, nurseryman and former Gardening Australia presenter

As the garden is more than 30 years old, it is time to assess each section to see what plants are performing well and which ones aren’t. As the garden has matured everything has grown a lot and some plants are no longer performing so out they go and new plants go in their place.

Peter May, consultant and retired horticultural academic

The main garden area at our place will have had its sixth summer by the end of this one and since it has generally behaved itself up till now, I’m not expecting too many surprises in terms of performance – unless, of course, it’s very much drier, or very much wetter, than what we’ve had over the last few years.

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What I have been thinking about though is that a few areas need some work. I think the fancier gardening writers call this editing. There are a couple of bare patches that need filling, and there are a few combinations that need to be rethought. There’s a shrubby Ceanothus that has to be taken in hand and a clump of Iris that has to be lifted and thinned. No doubt a longer list will form as the summer unfolds.

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