My New Year’s resolution to sit in the garden more has been on my mind constantly, and I’ve finally resolved to get a garden designer in to help me make the best of the tiny courtyard space by the backdoor.

I knew it would be difficult to get my husband to go along with this expense. So I made a list: why pay for garden design? After all, it will just be an idea on paper, with much more expense to follow if the builders execute the plan, so I figured I’d better have my rationale clear in my own mind. As it happened, he ended up agreeing even before I’d read him the list, but it was a useful exercise anyway — here are my top reasons:

1. Inviting spaces will bring us outside: as family we’re so much more likely to use the garden if there’s a welcoming place to eat and rest out there. At the moment the kids run about outside and I work on the garden, but we never just chill. I want that, and the kitchen courtyard is the perfect place.
2. A tiny space needs big thinking: this is a hard-working area that needs to cater for hanging laundry, feel cozy but not claustrophobic, look good from above and from the kitchen window in all weathers. And that’s not even talking about the planting, which should be peaceful, fragrant, and ideally incorporate a way to drown out road noise. I couldn’t get my head round it myself and finally realized that a professional eye with small-site experience is critical for this space.



3. Outside lunches for two: in good weather I try to lure my husband outdoors at lunch, but too much sun, or too little, or the general discomfort of the seating, or bug attacks mean he’ll often give up and duck back inside. A really livable outside dining space can let us enjoy our soup and sandwich and crossword while the kids are at school, and the world is on hold for an hour.
   
4. Pave the way for later: Our kids are tiny and mostly play with friends inside now, but they’ll want more privacy as they get older. When I was growing up my friends never hung out at my house, and I want it to be different for our kids. I’d like them to keep bringing their friends over, and an outside kickback space will make that more likely.
5. Lack of design could cost more: If I didn’t get a designer’s help with this space, chances are I’d push ahead with something of my own devising — a bit of new seating, some slabs, a pergola of some kind. Would it work? If it didn’t, would I keep trying, and keep spending? Probably. If we plan to stay in this house, let’s get it right first time. I can stick to the essential purchases for the next long while (manure, bone meal, potting compost), and swap, divide or grow from seed if I want more plants.

Would you ever get a garden designer to help you with part of your space? If you’ve used a designer, what was the experience like?

Before I blogged, I never made New Year’s resolutions, much less wrote them down. It’s funny to look over what I resolved a year ago. Happily, I managed two of the four resolutions I made: I don’t scream at toads anymore, and I even knocked apologetically on a few tiles I had to shift earlier today, hoping nothing was asleep beneath it. I also managed to grow food pretty successfully for the first time in 2010: just lettuces, spring onions, a few tomatoes and herbs, but it was exciting, and the children seemed genuinely interested and dragged visitors over to examine the raised bed at every opportunity.

So briefly, for 2011:

Don’t look back: never mind about the two resolutions I didn’t manage last year. I’m giving up on trying to make the November border fabulous for the moment, and I didn’t quite manage to bring everything into the cold conservatory that should’ve come in, but, onward!

Sit down more: if you’re like me, every seat in the garden is a hotseat. Jobs call to me wherever my eyes land, and I’m up again in a few seconds. I’m going to strive to make an area of the garden very sit-friendly: it’s right outside our kitchen and conservatory, and it’s almost completely enclosed by the house walls and boundary fence. I’m thinking serene green, hostas, and a rambling, thornless pale rose (“Lykkefund”, already ordered from Peter Beales) that I’ll train sideways instead of up to cover the cottage walls. There’s a vigorous deep purple clematis, “Polish Spirit”, already in this area and I need to tone it down. I’m unsure whether to put up a pergola or awning or anything at all: the space is narrow, so maybe I should keep the sky above open. If the whole area is simply planted and unfussy, surely it will be easier to sit for more than 60 seconds in the garden?

Give the children what they want: I told my daughter and son (4 and 5) they could have their own raised bed in a good, sunny spot to do whatever they want with. He’s not so keen, but she is. She said she wants to grow “cucumbers and pink poppies”. We may have to work on that plant selection but I really do want it to be hers. And I’m not going to give up on trying to interest him, either.

Hug the trees: I planted two pears from Ken Muir this year, and I resolve to mind them and the two cobnuts I’m planning to get from Ken this year and plant in half whiskey barrels by the garden gate. @MarkDoc says it’s iffy, but it may work if I keep them pruned and well watered. I can feel an automatic drip irrigation system in my future. I am a neglector of containers, but a lover of nuts. I want these wee trees to live.

What are you resolving to do in your garden this year? Do you think it’s achievable, or are you going more aspirational with your resolutions?

It was pretty awful to end the gardening year with a blizzard on 26 November. Last year it snowed for a month starting just before Christmas Eve, and I thought that was bad. We’ve now had 2 feet of snow in two weeks, with a low of -14 Celsius.

When I was little I loved snow so much I prayed for it, but I have a hard time liking it now. That’s despite having seen how well it protects my plants. I didn’t lose much in the garden this summer, and yesterday I was able to dig out helleborus foetidus from melting snow. It looked like it had just lain its head down for a rest, and it stood up again.

This proof of life was interesting, but it didn’t change the numbness I’ve felt toward the garden since the blizzard. It’s the kind of ennui that defines ennui: defeated, empty, apathetic. Usually on a tea break or before falling asleep I wrap myself in thoughts about the garden: plans for new roses, spring planting combinations, schemes to get height into the border. But these last two weeks, the thoughts won’t come. It’s as if the garden had been compulsorily purchased and a high fence erected between me and it.

But today I did five minutes of what could pass for gardening. All I did was push pea sticks into a bowl of hyacinths I’ve been forcing. I got the most fleeting taste of that mad joy – nurturing a plant that needs something, studying its miraculous form, anticipating bloom-time.

Okay, it was barely gardening, but it was enough to dig me out of the snow and help me stand up again.

I’ve written a sonnet about the snow. Want to hear it?

Snow angel

The flakes are smudges on the whiter sky,
its blankness scribbled over left to right
by airy, aimless polka dots of snow;
Its business is silent smothering
of branches, berries, buds that don’t protest,
although I do; the plants have left their things
along the border by the garden wall
and snow is gaily claiming everything,
dizzy and oblivious, like one who
forgets the morning by the afternoon;
The garden’s gone, why do I seek it here?
perhaps the snow knows what it has to do:
protect what has withdrawn into the earth
and mark the place to watch for white rebirth.

My list of what’s looking good in the garden this week is short, but I’m going to try to remember how stunning the last few stems of anemone coronaria and rosa “James Galway” are, and try to make more of them next November. I’m still looking for November combinations that please, to coincide with my daughter’s birthday at the end of October. With the advice of Clare from PlantPassion I think I’ve settled on fuschia as an anchor and potentially pots of winter-planted anemone coronaria to flower now, for a few shots of colour around the garden and in the last vases of flowers for the house.

The deep, relentless snow of last January means I’m holding more tightly than ever to the fading November garden, as damp and slippery as it is. I need to be willing to let it go to sleep completely for 12 weeks. I tell myself that it needs a proper rest after the hyperbolic show of growth of the last nine months. And I should be grateful for the chance to look past its outer self, with the x-ray vision autumn offers, and into its bones: at the camellia “Black Lace” that’s lurked behind the towering Nicotiana sylvestris and cosmos all summer, slowly budding up at the foot of the climbing rose. Admittedly it was a thrill to pull away the dying things two weeks ago and see that the winter scene was ready for me: the camellia, the red stemmed cornus, the six-foot tree stump that a reluctant ivy is finally embracing, and the lanky arms of Etoile de Holland stretching out above it all, finally getting old and woody enough to thin a bit.

Yes, I suppose I do appreciate that my garden tells no lies in winter. I am still feeling my way towards a design for this garden that feels balanced and always offers some degree of visual pleasure — a snack if not a feast — and winter is a unique chance to check my work. I’ve stared at this space so hard, for so many years now, that even the wet branches and fallen leaf mush of the well-planted bits thrill me, because I can see what they represent.

Since I returned to a part-time schedule in July, my time at the desk is intense, working back-to-back on different client writing projects as I try to pack as much as possible into my hours. This has forced me to actively seek ways to relax during my 15 minute buffer breaks between projects. I make myself go outdoors, usually with clippers, usually to cut something I can bring back to the desk or leave outside on one of the small tables dotted about the garden.

I only learn one or two things about gardening a year, and this is one of my 2010 discoveries: a vase of flowers left outside makes everybody happy. The flowers stay longer, the colours I like are brought closer together, the insects enjoy visiting them, and they make the seating places in the garden look so tempting that I’ve even sat in them.

I’ve shown a few of my favourite vases from the garden here. Which appeals most to you, if any? Do you prefer to cut things for a vase, or leave them to die naturally in situ?

The fat, perfect apples I’ve picked from our two trees have sat like prizes in the conservatory window these last few weeks. These trees were the only food producers in my garden until this year’s Eatin’ Project, but this is the first year they’ve excelled. I insist on taking the credit, even though the experts say it’s the weather that’s given us great fruit yields this year. Do you think I can get away with that? Anyway, here’s what’s I’ve done that I believe helped the apples:

• Light and air: A few years ago Glenn next door asked if we’d consider cutting down a spruce that shaded both our gardens. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Removing the spruce and pruning the apples’ crowded branches gradually over three years has now given them an open shape and lots of space between the limbs — enough to throw a hat between them, as the saying goes. This year the fruit ripened better and there were no brown spots as in other years, either because of better air circulation, or a drier summer, or both, I’m not sure.

• Sulfate of potash: I give both trees a dressing of this to promote fruiting, and it works. But Lia and other writers have recently got me thinking I must look into what’s involved in its manufacture. If I’m shaking white dust from a box onto the ground, I should investigate whether it’s the best thing for my friend Gaia. I’d like to investigate substitutes, like woodash; but I don’t know the amounts to use or whether it’s as effective.

• Nip it in the bud: I’d always been reluctant to follow the advice about thinning out developing apples to leave 10cm between them. But I see now what a difference it makes. I missed out part of one tree when thinning this year, and the fruits were about half as big. All our apples are destined for baking, and there’s nothing fun about peeling two small fruits that could have been one big one.

• Accept the apples, don’t pick: I’d often heard but rarely heeded the professional advice about picking: that you should cradle and gently turn ripening apples to check their readiness, instead of pulling them. But this year I did it, and for those that were ready, the apple and stem came away from the tree easily, as if they’d been waiting for me. Just before harvest time I’d heard a Scotland’s Gardens podcast about how a deciduous tree shuts off the flow of nutrients to its autumn leaves, so that when they fall, there are no open wounds: the leaf is a finished thing, its connection with the tree is finished. I came to see the apples in the same way and checked them daily with my young daughter, who loved lifting the fruit gently in her tiny hand. When one was ready, we just accepted it from the tree: no picking required.

How do I make my mother’s apple pie?

I love the crispy, gooey topping on apple crumble (or apple crisp, as we called it back home), but even I got tired after the third one. So – after reluctantly replacing the rolling pin that had been sacrificed to modeling clay activities before becoming lost altogether – I attempted my mother’s apple pie. I didn’t let the kids help; I told them I was like Nina and the Neurons, doing an experiment in the lab, and they could help next time. So the whole experience was quite peaceful, and frame by frame, pictures from my mother’s kitchen table appeared in my brain, when I was chest-high to the work surface.

I love learning new things but hate making mistakes, so where the recipe didn’t give me answers, I was glad the pictures showed me what to do. “Slice them thin – your father doesn’t like a mouthful of hard apple in his pie.” “Get me the blue plate – it’s stoneware, the other ones crack in the oven.” “Tuck the top crust under the bottom one around the edge – you want to have apples right out to the edge, not a bunch of crust out there.” Then the milk brushed onto the top, the air holes poked to vent the steam, the baking tray beneath to catch any drips. I didn’t make the pastry offcuts into cinnamon-and-sugar shapes to bake separately, but I was delighted to suddenly recall these; I hadn’t thought of them in 30 years.

My only problem was needing to be at a plant sale down the road at the same time the pie was due to come out, so I entrusted the whole thing to a timed shut-off of the oven. When I opened the oven a few hours later, I was a bit surprised to find my mother’s apple pie, brown and warm, redolent of clove and cinnamon, just like her kitchen on pie days, but with my apples. The kids were still at swimming with my husband, so I had a slice of pie and a glass of milk in the same solitude with which I’d made it. It was a good Saturday.