Planting my tree change | In Fiona's Garden

I may not keep them all but the list concentrates my mind.

I like to plant a tree in the garden every year, in addition to those we plant on the farm.

Next winter I've a great excuse to plant a white cedar (Melia azedarach) as a few years ago I made the classic mistake of putting one almost under a power line.

It has had to go, a lesson to look up before looking down when digging a hole for a tree.

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A white cedar I planted in our entrance paddock is currently covered with sweet smelling, violet flowers and has a second season of interest in winter when its bright yellow berries appear.

It is Australia's only indigenous deciduous tree and is frost and drought hardy.

Planting more early summer bulbs is another resolution.

Clear blue Triteleia laxa 'Queen Fabiola' from California and Oregon grasslands flowers with the November roses and continues for a month, the perfect ground cover.

I often start off new bulbs in pots, partly to see how and when they flower before deciding where to put them in the garden.

As a result I've accumulated far too many small pots so am resolving to trade them for fewer, bigger ones.

Large pots are easier to manage than small ones.

One big pot is a feature in its own right and several grouped together - it doesn't matter if they are different shapes and materials - make just as effective a design statement as 10 or 15 terracotta tiddlers.

Big pots are useful for herbs as one pot can take up to half a dozen (apart from mint which needs its own) and they won't dry out and die in a heatwave.

Sowing biennial vegetables in mid-summer - more on this topic in January - is an excellent resolution.

Cauliflower and broccoli, for example, grow in one season and after a winter chilling, flower the next.

The flowers are the part we eat, so if you sow them in January you can enjoy them next spring.

I'm adding 'divide ornamental grasses in September to my resolutions, as I so often forget to do it.

If you divide grasses like Stipa and Miscanthus in late winter or early spring, you maximise their potential.

Spring is exactly when they jump into growth and you'll have lovely big clumps by autumn.

I'm longing to increase my miniature toe toe (pronounced toy toy), Chionochloa flavicans, that I planted two years ago.

It has narrow, dark green leaves and arching flower heads to about one metre, looking like silky, oat-coloured feathers.

I'd love half a dozen clumps to dot about, so this is on the Must Do list for September.

My final resolution is to thin out my low growing "paddock" beds so that I have spaces between each of the plants.

I can then appreciate them as individuals, rather than a jumbled mass.

Happy gardening and Happy new year!

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