While I wait for Mother Nature’s next cruelty to gardens, I am busy planning new plantings. They vary with gardens’ categories: new ones, small ones, big ones in need of revitalisation and big ones that are gloriously empty and need planting throughout. Planning of plantings can be micro or macro. It can be obsessive, down to the last mini-primrose, or relaxed, about which plants in a big batch will eventually go where. It is fascinating to see which type of planner new garden owners begin by being and which they become with experience.
I leave myself latitude when a plant plan has to become planting in reality, but it is a latitude framed by a broader plan of what I need where. Should the planting plan simply be done digitally, especially with use of AI? In my case no, because I am not digitally deft and at this time of year I am screen-shocked after coping with online tax returns, compiled with VAT systems whose add-ins do not function and whose compatible hubs to HM Revenue & Customs then fail on New Year’s Eve.