Planning is crucial to the success of the new gardening year. The gardener decides what to keep, what to change, and what new gardening projects to devise. Perusing photographs is invaluable to me. As the idiom says, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’ Therefore, this month I spent time reviewing all the pictures I took in 2025 and checking the notes I made throughout the year. The following is a partial list of what worked and what didn’t at Astolat Gardens in 2025.

WHAT WORKED

1. Acquiring Our New Garden Dog (this item has to be first!)

Klara, our sweet Westie, loves the garden, especially the meadow and the gazebo there. We’ve had her for four months now with no regrets. She is an excellent companion, especially on my morning walks around the property.

2. ‘Late’ Spring Bulbs

The Daffodil Walk, which takes visitors to the front porch, was glorious again this year. Compared with gardeners south of here, who have milder climates, I have fewer spring blooms. I appreciate the ones that arrive and thrive, usually later in the season.

Snowdrops, crocus, hellebore, and Pulmonaria’s pretty pink and blue flowers are reliable.

3. The Kitchen and Herb Gardens

The 2025 kitchen garden provided a steady supply of produce from late spring through fall.

Today, there are pickled red beets in the jelly cupboard. Carrots are waiting for me to pick them before the soil freezes. We leave parsnips in the ground to enjoy when it thaws. It was a good year for herbs in the raised garden trugs on the patio. Next year, I plan to grow some of the herbs mentioned in The Bible. I hope my friend Shelley Cramm, who introduced me to them, visits my garden in 2026. Her books, My Father is the Gardener, Devotions in Botany and Gardening of the Bible, and God’s Word for Gardeners Bible, are my resources. Check them out!

4. Four gardens that worked well in 2025.

Clockwise from top left - Serenity Garden, Rain Garden, the Stone Garden, and the bountiful Kitchen Garden. The Stone Garden worked exceptionally well because I eliminated some of the planters. Doing this meant less work, less expense, and a cleaner design.

5. The Cottage Garden

I planted several annuals in the Cottage Garden, such as salvias and zinnias. They were lovely, providing more color and texture among the perennials.

Susie and I removed a lot of the aggressive gooseneck loosestrife from the Cottage Garden. This task, accomplished in early spring, made room for existing and new plants to spread and thrive. I discussed gooseneck loosestrife, an annoying yet beautiful plant, in last month’s newsletter.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK AND WHAT I LEARNED

1. When the daffodils had died back along the path to the front door, I planted tallish annual cottage-garden flowers such as angelonia. They did not achieve the cottage-garden look I wanted because they were too sparse, given the very narrow flower beds. Widening the beds and increasing the number of flowers would mean more work and expense. Instead, I am considering planting colorful low-growing annuals in 2026. I believe vinca, sweet alyssum, and lobelia may work well.

2. Hollyhocks, Diervilla, and Ninebark

I planted new hollyhocks in the Cottage Garden, but I got only one bloom, and they didn’t grow tall. Hollyhocks are biennial, which means they grow in the first year and bloom in the second. I thought I was getting second-year plants, but probably not. Now I believe 2026 will be the charm.

The Diervilla on the left of the hollyhocks didn’t do well this year. Neither did the Physocarpus (ninebark) on the hollyhocks' right-hand side. I pruned both, but they weren’t happy, maybe because of the excessive rain in spring and the drought in summer. I will give both shrubs a renewal cut at the end of winter/early spring. This will involve cutting them almost down to the ground, leaving only 6 to 24 inches. This method is also called rejuvenation pruning or renovation pruning. It is used to restore old, overgrown, or declining multi-stemmed shrubs by stimulating vigorous new growth from the base. Essentially, I aim to ‘reset the clock,’ resulting in a healthier, smaller, and more productive plant. I will let you know how it works out.

3. The new variety of cucumber seeds I chose this year produced tough, bitter-tasting fruit. I have to look back at the order to confirm the variety’s name. Next year, I will purchase the reliable straight eight variety. This heirloom cucumber produces straight, dark green, cylindrical fruits that are disease-resistant. They taste delicious.

4. I planted numerous hardy plumbago (Ceratostigma) in the Serenity Garden two years ago, but they have all but disappeared. However well I research and follow instructions, not all plants succeed in my garden—an essential lesson for all gardeners. It is of no use to complain or beat yourself up; find a different plant and move on.

We begin each new gardening year with hope: not looking back to last year’s failures, but forward to the coming successes. They say the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Gardeners, while generally repeating what worked last year, do not expect the same outcomes because success in the garden depends upon too many variables: what sort of winter they had, which nasty bugs overwintered in the soil, the viability of saved seeds, and much more. As I order plants and new packets of seeds for the coming season, I forget the capriciousness of gardening and remember only the joys. The coming year will be a GREAT year in the garden!

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Love,

Pamela x