This year, instead of gardening resolutions, which I never have and wouldn’t keep if I did, I have a list of gardening wishes. They are also unlikely – if not utterly impossible – to become reality, but there’s less guilt, this way.

It’s definitely an aspirational time. Though I never plant seeds, I am getting those catalogs, as well as catalogs for summer bulbs and annuals. Old-fashioned annuals are a big weakness of mine. As I look forward to another growing season, there are things that I wish would change about gardening, but I know will not.

For example:

I wish gardening was faster. Lately, I’ve been making some changes in the perennial beds, creating little pathways so that backdrop climbers and vine get more sun and giving short plants some breathing space. But it’s taking too long. As I grow older and, at the same time, have just as limited time to garden – and less physical ability – I wish it would speed up. Never mind the sleeping and creeping. Just leap already.

I wish I liked evergreen shrubs more. Even many of the trees seem ho-hum, but I’ve yet to find the shrubs anything other than boring in any season. I suppose there are exceptions – I do like the feathery varieties more. Even broadleaf evergreens like my leatherleaf viburnum and the rhododendrons – which I finally rid of -can be so annoying in winter. Evergreen or not, those leaves looked they were waiting for someone to put them out of their misery.

I wish lightweight pots didn’t suck. But there it is. They can’t disguise that they’re trying to look like something they’re not. There is nothing like a big, heavy gorgeous ceramic pot. I bought a new flat trolley to move them around this year. We’ll see how it does. 

I wish I could enjoy easy-care, everblooming roses. But the hybridizers – and they are busy – can’t seem to come up with anything that isn’t so-so in both fragrance and form. David Austin, on whom I still rely, is always improving, but deadheading and periods of nothing at the height of summer are still a given.

I wish I did better with our local native wildflowers – hepatica, lilium canadense, claytonia, native orchids and the like. It’s possible to buy them as plants around here – for a bit more than I’d like to pay – but many don’t seem to enjoy my conditions. I’ll keep trying. And I’ll always have anemone canadensis (above).

Thinking of my white whales of the garden season isn’t depressing though. It will make me happy in the gray days to come.

Oh, and by the way, happy New Year!