It's a good time to take a look at last year's gardening successes and failures, savoring the better accomplishments and trying to learn something useful from the not-so-good. It's time for a few New Year's gardening resolutions.

New Year's resolutions are often intimidating or even a little depressing -- and the fact is, most of them are scrapped before the end of January. But gardening resolutions are low-pressure pledges. "I see them more as goals, or even like a dream," says Karen Beaty, a horticulturist at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. Beaty is in charge of the Wildflower Center's 4.5-acre family garden. At the end of the gardening season, "I think of what we did and what we can do better next year," she says. On those terms, resolutions aren't burdensome: They're full of promise, just like a package of seeds.

This year, Beaty has pledged to document the development of the garden more thoroughly. She's not thinking in terms of spreadsheets: She plans to take pictures of flower beds, making a record of the garden's growth through the seasons, highlighting plant combinations. She's going to photograph the installation of an underground irrigation system, so it doesn't get dug up later by mistake. She plans to take pictures from her favorite vantage points in the garden, and even to photograph things she doesn't like. "That way I can see what I want to do more of, and what I don't want to do more of," she says.

Beaty has also vowed to be more ruthless in her pruning practices this year. Pruning stimulates growth, after all, and she regrets not having trimmed long-blooming perennials in midsummer, to encourage them to continue producing flowers well into the fall. "I'm trying to coach myself to not be afraid to prune like that," she says. Salvia, bee balm, helianthus, coreopsis, purple coneflower and black-eyed Susans will all produce an extra flush of blooms if they're cut back in early summer. Of course, annual flowers, such as zinnias, cosmos and marigolds, also keep blooming heavily all summer long if you cut off the flowers as they fade.

Heather Sherwood, a horticulturist at the Chicago Botanic Garden, is concentrating on beneficial insects and pollinators in her gardening resolutions for 2018. In fact, she got started on this resolution in late fall, blowing autumn leaves off the lawn and into shrub and flower beds, where they serve as mulch, create a rich habitat for beneficial insects and, over time, decompose to add nutrients and micronutrients to the soil. "People used to think this was bad," Sherwood says, "but now we realize that good insects are in those leaves." Turning autumn leaves into a resource for the garden saves time that would otherwise be spent bagging the leaves and getting rid of them. It also saves money because she doesn't have to purchase mulch for the flower beds.

To make more pollinators feel welcome in the garden, Sherwood plans to install bee houses made with short lengths of bamboo, bundled together. Hang these bee houses from tree branches, and mason bees will find them. Sherwood protects pollinators at home, too: She keeps bees on the flat roof of her garage, where she harvested 50 jars of honey last year. "Bees are so cool," she says.

Taking care of pollinators is good for the health of food gardens, too. Chris Smith, an enthusiastic home gardener and marketing manager for Sow True Seeds, a mail-order seed catalog company in Asheville, North Carolina, plans to grow more flowers in his vegetable garden this year. Flowers attract pollinators, which increase yields, Smith says. Planting flowers among vegetables also "looks great, and it breaks up the monoculture of a single bed," he says.

Smith plans to grow a border of sunflowers along one side of his backyard vegetable garden. He's also going to plant nasturtiums in with his squash, and he's making room for lots of marigolds, among other annual flowers.

Smith also vows that in 2018 he'll work harder to make the most of vegetables that can be harvested several ways. Instead of composting the tops of beets and carrots, he's planning to eat the greens. "I'm trying to tackle the problems of food waste and small-space gardening" by making the best use of everything he grows, he says. Turnip greens and radish tops are likewise edible. The leaves of some beans, sweet potatoes and peas are also delicious. Smith really appreciates okra (he once grew 14 different kinds) and delights in recipes for the unexpected, such as okra pizza. He also eats the leaves.

Gardening resolutions are meant to be inspiring, not onerous, these professionals say. If your busy life gets in the way of your good intentions, just do the best you can. "If you don't achieve your resolution, don't beat yourself up," Beaty says. "If it's a good one, you can recycle it. There's always next year."

If you really want to relax, take a yoga mat outside. Practicing yoga in a garden, far from the busy world and close to nature, is like going on a retreat in your own backyard.

Almost 40 million people practice yoga in the United States, and 80 million more intend to get started, according to the 2016 Yoga in America study, an annual report for the Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance. Most people practice in groups at fitness studios, but interest in yoga at home and outdoors is growing. Public parks and botanic gardens are engaging yoga instructors to teach outdoors in the gardening season, and garden designers are finding that their clients want places set aside in their own yards to practice yoga.

"A lot of our clients are interested in yoga, and we have created platforms and decks where they can practice outside," says Sabrena Schweyer, a landscape designer in Akron, Ohio, who practices yoga on her own front porch. Sometimes clients make room for a yoga mat on an existing patio or deck, she says, or simply choose a level, grassy spot in a sheltered corner of the garden, and make it their yoga sanctuary.

Richard Rosiello, a landscape designer in New Milford, Connecticut, worked with a client on an outdoor dining pavilion that has turned into a multipurpose room -- part yoga studio, part family retreat -- at the heart of the garden. The pavilion is "close to the house, but far enough away," Rosiello says. "It's surrounded by color and movement, but there is a sense of quietness and an energy about it. It's nurturing."

Rosiello's client, Hillary Lane, practices yoga outdoors from spring through fall. In cool weather, she sometimes wears a wooly knit cap and scarf. "Whenever I can, I practice outside," Lane says. "It clears my head." As she works through her yoga poses, she watches the birds and butterflies at the planter boxes around the pavilion, listens to the wind in the trees, and enjoys the views across the garden. "These are the kinds of distractions you want," Lane says. "The birds, the wind, the air -- it just feels so different from practicing inside."

A standard yoga mat is about 2 feet wide and 6 feet long, and a place to practice yoga only needs to be a little larger than that. A platform or patio eight feet wide and 10 to 12 feet long is generous and comfortable, Schweyer says, and can accommodate two people practicing yoga together. It can also be a deck, a dining area or a quiet garden destination. She suggests placing a yoga platform on the east side of the house, where you can greet the morning sun with traditional yoga sun salutations.

To find the right spot, walk around your garden and look for a place of sheltered tranquility, Schweyer suggests. The place you choose should be accessible, perhaps by a winding, meditative path, and shielded by trees or shrubs. "It needs to have some enclosure on three sides, to be a kind of cocoon," she says. Schweyer also suggests placing a step or paving stones at the entrance to a yoga garden, as a physical and psychological signal that you're about to enter a special place.

If you're looking for inspiration, you might try practicing yoga in a public park or botanic garden, where you can experience different settings and surfaces and start to think about adapting those you like to your own backyard. Public gardens from coast to coast are collaborating with local yogis and yoga studios to offer classes, sometimes year-round (held indoors, of course, in inclement weather).

Last year, the U.S. Botanic Garden offered free yoga classes in the garden on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The Denver Botanic Garden, Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden in Richmond, Virginia, and other botanic gardens in Iowa, Illinois, New York, California, Texas -- the list goes on -- all held outdoor yoga classes.

"Yoga is a perfect complement to our gardens, especially since the No. 1 reason many visitors come to the Arboretum is to relax," says Wendy Composto, a staff member at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, Minnesota, near Minneapolis. The outdoor yoga program started five years ago and has been a roaring success: Five yoga studios offer classes at the arboretum. One class last summer had 99 participants practicing their yoga poses together in the rose garden.

"Yoga is a time to reflect and take some time for yourself," Composto says, "and a garden is a great place to do that." Both gardens and yoga classes are good places to meet friends, she says. The connections -- among peace, reflection, the beauty of nature, and people -- are powerful. Outdoor yoga brings them all gracefully together.

SOURCES

-- To find outdoor yoga classes in your area, try an internet search using the words "yoga" and "garden." Or call your local botanic garden or parks and recreation department to ask about the possibilities. To learn more about the yoga programs at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, visit arboretum.umn.edu.

-- Sabrena Schweyer is a member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD) and an owner of Salsbury-Schweyer Inc., a landscape design firm in Akron, Ohio. The business specializes in sustainable landscapes and designs that capture the spirit of place in every garden. For more information, visit salsbury-schweyer.com.

-- Richard Rosiello is a landscape designer, APLD member and owner of Rosiello Designs LLC, in New Milford, Connecticut. His garden designs combine his professional landscape training and experience with his background in art. Rosiello teaches design classes at New York Botanic Garden. For more information, email rosiellodesigns@gmail.com.

-- If you're not accustomed to doing yoga by yourself, online classes (video and audio format) will guide you through a yoga practice. Try doyogawithme.com, which has many free classes; bemoreyogic.com also offers free classes. Take your MP3 player, laptop or smartphone into the garden and get started.

Public gardening programs from coast to coast give kids and adults a chance to get some dirt under their fingernails and discover the fun and satisfaction in gardens and the natural world. Healthy vegetables are part of the appeal, but the focus isn't only on food. The goal of these programs is to make the world a better place -- one gardener and one green space at a time.

Gardening for good can take many forms. Neighborhood gardens tend to be gathering places, where all are welcome. Gardens and gardening programs for veterans, seniors, and disabled children and adults create opportunities for people to connect with nature and cultivate new hope. Public orchards and berry patches put fresh fruit within everyone's reach. School gardens and farm-to-school gardening projects get kids used to healthy foods and encourage teachers to make gardening and nature part of the curriculum.

City Blossoms, a public gardening program based in Washington, D.C., has designed more than 50 urban educational gardens across the country, in collaboration with schools and community organizations. The group has 13 sites in the Washington area, where kids and teens from ages 3 to 19 take care of flower and vegetable gardens in their neighborhoods. Teachers and adult volunteers help, of course, but kids are the heart of the program. "We create spaces for young people to empower themselves," says Rebecca Lemos-Otero, co-founder and director of City Blossoms. "They have a sense of pride and ownership, and when we see kids taking on these roles on their own, it's very exciting."

Nature and art go together, Lemos-Otero says, and garden art and artistic expression are part of the program. Kids paint welcoming signs for their plots, make labels for the plants, and create garden sculptures. The art projects "are a good way to bring people into the garden as a first step," Lemos-Otero says. "Maybe they're not ready to garden, but they're ready to do art."

Over the course of a summer, and through the years, the kids develop along with their gardens. They learn about community and culture, make friends, and develop new interests and abilities. They also take these skills and interests out into the world with them when they get older. Kids from the City Blossoms program have even gone on to environmental studies in college, Lemos-Otero says.

In Madison, Wisconsin, Community Groundworks brings kids and gardens together and also works with veterans and disabled adults. The organization, founded in 2001, has developed a five-acre community farm, holds workshops and maintains a demonstration vegetable garden on the grounds of the state capitol. More than 3,500 children participate in the Community Groundworks gardening programs for children and adolescents, says Ginny Hughes, the group's education director.

Gardens do not have to be very large to make a big difference, Hughes says. Even in a small plot, kids -- and adults -- can learn the basics of planning, planting, tending and harvesting vegetables and flowers. An important benefit is that gardening naturally leads to healthy eating habits, she says. "When kids are involved in the process of growing, they are more likely to eat what they grow," she says. "They may say 'I hate broccoli,' but then they try it and they love it."

Community Groundworks also runs a half-acre organic farm in Madison where school and community groups, families and teachers cultivate crops without using artificial fertilizers or pesticides. What these budding farmers don't eat themselves is donated to a local food pantry -- last year, the gardeners donated 3,000 pounds of produce. During the summer months, kids in the program come to the farm for three hours a day, four days a week. "We develop relationships, and they see all the cool things in the garden that you can't understand if you see them just once," Hughes says.

In Kansas City, Missouri, an organization called The Giving Grove has planted more than 2,000 fruit trees in 135 schoolyards, church properties and community gardens throughout the city's metropolitan area. The program, which is part of Kansas City Community Gardens, enlists the help of volunteers to plant and maintain apple, pear and peach trees; berry bushes; and nut trees that thrive in Kansas City's climate and urban conditions. The volunteers become the stewards of orchards in their neighborhoods. Giving Grove's goal is to create sustainable and reliable sources of healthy food, to raise awareness of smart food choices, and -- in the process of helping neighbors and volunteers plant, care for and harvest fruit -- to bring communities together.

The Philadelphia Orchard Project has similar goals, working with volunteers and horticultural professionals to plan, plant and maintain orchards in the city. POP has installed orchards at schools, churches and community gardens, and supports orchards at mission centers and the city's prison complex.

Enthusiasm for public fruit plantings and community orchards has spread across the country to Los Angeles, Seattle, Baltimore, Boston and Portland, Oregon, among other cities. Good-news gardening groups are growing for a reason: There can never be too many places for people to come together in peaceful, productive and rewarding enterprises. Gardens are a natural place to start.

SOURCES

In big cities and out in the country, gardening organizations are encouraging communities to discover the fun and satisfaction of gardens by developing green spaces and cultivating people's interest in growing food and flowers and enjoying some of the small wonders of nature. There's no single template for success, but the work of these organizations stands out:

-- City Blossoms (cityblossoms.org) promotes healthy neighborhoods through community gardening. The organization provides free programs for schools and organizes lively after-school and summer programming for children and adults, primarily in the Washington, D.C., area. City Blossoms also develops programs and curricula for garden programs nationwide.

-- The Giving Grove (givinggrove.org) has planted more than 2,000 fruit and nut trees in communities in the Kansas City area, with a projected annual harvest of more than 250 tons of healthy fruit. Orchards in parks, community gardens, and on school and church grounds are intended to provide neighborhoods with easy access to fresh fruit in season. Volunteers become garden stewards, working alongside Giving Grove staff.

-- Philadelphia Orchard Project (phillyorchards.org) works with communities, schools and local groups to plant orchards of fruit trees and edible plants. POP helps design and plant the orchards, and trains volunteers to care for the trees and plants.

-- Community Groundworks (communitygroundworks.org) in Madison, Wisconsin, brings people, gardens and nature together. A five-acre community farm, kids' gardens, gardens in schoolyards, workshops and other garden programming foster healthy lifestyles and diets. Curricula and guides suggest possibilities that would work in any community.

-- Urban Food Forestry (urbanfoodforestry.org) is a website of resources for anyone interested in finding or working with community orchards and public fruit projects.