New year gardening: ‘It feels like everything is shifting’

There are lots of words that Irish gardeners could use to sum up the year that was 2023. “Wet” is certainly high on the list, given the record levels of rainfall experienced in most parts of the country from late summer onwards as well as the badly waterlogged state of many soils.

Odd as it may sound, “dry” is another, given the near drought-like conditions of much of spring and early summer. “Disappointing”, “frustrating” and “difficult” are also definitely up there. So are “peculiar”, and “unpredictable”, all of them expressive of the complex challenges increasingly confronting us as a result of climate change.

These same challenges are driving a seismic shift in the way we both want and need to garden in this strange new world of ours. As the country’s weather patterns become more extreme and less predictable, we are increasingly recognising the growing importance of gardening in ways that support and nurture the resilience of our gardens. So we are much more conscious, for example, of the pressing need to protect soil and plant health, as well as to foster biodiversity by respecting the myriad of life forms we share our precious patches of ground. For these reasons many of us are trying to be less tidy-minded, less fussy, less concerned with the pursuit of the ‘perfect’ garden, while at the same time be more thoughtful, more informed about the processes and possible consequences of our actions, as well as more willing to think outside the box.

The result is that traditional gardening chores that were once considered routine, such as the use of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, weekly mowing of the lawn, weeding, strimming, hedge trimming, and regularly digging over the allotment or kitchen garden in preparation