Now In Bloom It is time to appreciate the bones of the garden, and Indian hawthorn (Rhaphiolepis indica) is a glossy, spreading evergreen shrub that is handsome all winter. Low-growing (4-5 feet), its rich brown stems and mauvey-blue berries are winter standouts.

WHETHER because of raising kids or working at the University of Washington for so many years, I always feel the new year begins in September with changes in sunlight and schedule. But it is now, when the garden is most asleep, that the rhythm of the gardening year slows sufficiently for gardeners to pause and ponder their resolutions for the coming season.

As I tend to rebel against resolutions, even ones I make myself, I try merely to nudge myself in the right direction. All things are relative, right? So I plan in the coming year to prune and divide more than I plant, to save more plant tags than I toss, and to spend more time weeding than plant shopping. Yeah, sure.

Seeking inspiration, I spoke with some of the gardeners I most admire about their resolutions for 2001.

Lee Neff, the new editor of the Washington Park Arboretum Bulletin, may take the record for endurance (or delusion), as she promises in 2001 to complete a map of all the plants in her Seward Park garden - the same resolution she has made for the last 17 years. Patience is a fine virtue for a gardener.

You'd expect Joan Hockaday, seminar coordinator for the Northwest Flower and Garden Show, to be too frantic with show preparations to turn her thoughts to next season, but like all gardeners, she can't help but plan ahead. Hockaday plans to repaint her green picket fence, trim back all the dead fern fronds in her front garden, and pick the hips off the rugosa roses before they turn to mush.

Farther south on Bainbridge, artist-gardener David Lewis will be dealing with the consequences of his every-other-year winter coating of the garden with a thick blanket of manure, which means both calming the neighbors and chasing away neighborhood dogs intent on rolling about in the muck.

After the sale of Heronswood Nursery, Dan Hinkley is setting off to make a new garden. He resolves to create a space no larger then he can personally take care of in his dotage, and looks forward to planting an orchard and putting in a lawn with lots of weeds, butterflies, honeybees and earthworms.

David Laskin, author of "Rains All The Time," an ode to Northwest weather, is a transplant from New York who still marvels over our extended gardening season. He has learned, as have we all, that it takes more than a cooperative climate to make an artful garden. Laskin, who gardens on a hillside overlooking Puget Sound, describes his garden-making like this: "I can never resist that gorgeous, weird, variegated, dwarf plant, but then I think, 'What if it dies?', so I only buy one, hedging my bets, and stick it in some bed. There it thrives next to a little herd of other "onesies," and after a few years the effect is definitely patchwork quilt. Actually, quilt would be glorifying the hodgepodge." He resolves to be a braver gardener, and buy 3, 4, or 10 of that fab plant and really make a splash.

Nancy Heckler, whose waterfront garden graced the cover of this magazine last July, vows not to make any new beds, although she is quick to add that this doesn't count adding to existing ones. She'll deadhead all the dahlias and roses every other day, and resolves to stake plants early, while they're still vertical. She will be sure to thin the carrots before they look like ground cover, and the swiss chard before it grows into a hedge. She resolves, as she does every year, to divide the dahlias and daylilies, and she won't plant one single tree more, unless she decides to have an all-shade garden.

Nearly buried in Heckler's long list is the very best resolution of all, one I hope we all take to heart: She resolves to visit more gardens this year, including her own.

Valerie Easton is a horticultural librarian and writes about plants and gardens for Pacific Northwest magazine. Her e-mail address is vjeaston@aol.com