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Taking a leaf out of the experts’ book for the new year.

WITH a whole year stretching out ahead, I’ve spent the holiday period deciding what to do in the garden.

It has been hard to know where to start, so in making plans for 2019 I’ve turned for inspiration to real experts. During the last 12 months I’ve spent time with some of this country’s best head gardeners and have learned something from every encounter, so I’ve decided to borrow some of their wisdom. The first rule that I’m going to follow in 2019 is to stop leaving projects half done.

I have a tendency to hop from one thing to another and, as a result, everything ends up looking worse.

“It’s good to see the big picture, but pay attention to the details, too,” Brian Corr, head gardener at Dumfries House, told me.

And he’s right. That means tackling the weeding and keeping the lawn crisply edged before moving on to more exciting activities such as planting trees and marking out new borders. My next resolution is to give away the plants I love. Not all of them, but definitely a good number.

It is something botanic gardens do all the time and its importance was impressed upon me by Richard Baines, curator of Logan Botanic Garden on the Mull of Galloway.

“It means that if a plant or tree is wiped out by bad weather or disease in one location then it isn’t lost from the collection.”

One of the most important examples of this is the Wollemi pine that grows at Logan. This tree was discovered in the Blue Mountains of Australia in 1994 after being believed to be extinct for 200 million years. A seedling arrived at Logan in 2006 as part of an international safeguarding project that saw young Wollemis being spread around the world as a way of ensuring that the species never disappears again.

I don’t have anything as significant in my garden, but there are plants I cherish. That’s why friends and family are going to be pressed into taking seeds and cuttings so that if I lose a plant then I can ask for a bit to be returned. And I’m also going to think much harder about the significance of what I grow. This is a tip I picked up from Iain Govan at Culzean, who convinced me the best gardens all tell a story.

Iain is planting a tea garden that will celebrate the estate’s long history of growing camellias and, along with an orchard, cut flowers and vegetables, the borders now contain botanicals for gin and hops for brewing that reference the way in which Culzean was once self sufficient.

So what can I plant that would have similar significance here in Alloway?

A red rose for Robert Burns, of course, and some garlic as a nod to what may be a Roman road at the top of our garden. It’ll take more before my garden can be read like a story, but it’s a start.