Keeping a garden journal can be a valuable tool to help both novice and experienced gardeners meet their goals.
A garden journal provides a mechanism to review a garden’s past, present, and future. A journal can be simple or complex, sparse or detailed, black and white, or artistically colored. This article will describe the type of data, observations, diagrams, and paraphernalia that can be contained in a journal – all dictated by the gardener’s goals. A well-kept garden journal can be a very important tool in helping you become better engaged with your garden and even a better gardener.
Type of Journals
There are many types of journals. If you can use it easily, then you will use it more frequently. As with a new exercise or food plan, it is better to start small and add more content as you go along than ask too much of yourself all at once and give up.
You can keep track of your garden electronically. Perhaps you would prefer to store everything on your desktop, laptop, or tablet. Consider creating and updating all of your garden information using folders, spreadsheets, series of documents, and photographs. You may prefer a hardcopy version. Many attractive and comprehensive journals that are pre-organized with relevant and important content can be purchased as determined by the author. Examine these thoroughly to ensure that the journal meets your own needs. Perhaps the easiest way to begin is with a simple notebook, spiral, or three-ring binder. Some prefer a small waterproof journal that can be easily carried when venturing outside to garden centers and lectures. Others like a large three-ring or other binder system that can be added to as needs arise. A binder can have lined paper for notes and lists, monthly calendars, graph paper for garden diagrams, plain paper for drawing plants or attaching photos, pockets for plant tags, soil test results, and seed packets. Make sure there is room to grow as the seasons pass. There are benefits to retaining notes for many years.
Goals for Journaling and What to Journal
Your journal can help you meet goals for yourself and for your garden, whatever they may be. You may want to educate yourself on some aspects of gardening. Challenge yourself to learn botanical names by creating a list of your plants using their plant family, species, and cultivar names. Organize notes from books, articles, and classes by topic. Take an inventory of insects or diseases you have seen – or you might see – on the different plants in your garden. Include possible and actual remedies for problems.
If you want to be inspired, keep photos of beautiful gardens, plants, pathways, containers, structures, etc. Keep a list of public and private gardens you want to visit. Write down your favorite quotes or other words of wisdom.
If you are on a budget (and who isn’t!), record your budget and how you expect to use it that season. Then keep track of actual expenses by category. Save your receipts and plant warranties in the journal. Make a list of frugal gardening solutions. Which of your gardening friends will be willing to provide a cutting from a shrub that you can propagate? With whom can you trade perennial plant divisions? When?
If you are as busy as I am and need to be kept on schedule, use your journal to provide reminders of your gardening tasks. Let it help you plan your seasonal tasks so they are not forgotten. Make basic lists of what needs to be accomplished each month. The lists can be reused from year to year. Add calendars to your journal and schedule such things as pruning, seed starting, fertilization applications, transplanting, and harvesting for preservation. Add the average first frost and frost-free dates for planning purposes.
Your garden journal can record what you have accomplished. Write on your calendar when tasks were completed in a different color from what was scheduled. Add the actual first and last frost-free dates.
Record your physical garden. Draw diagrams of your garden beds. Color them in—store plant labels. Keep soil tests and what amendments were added. Place seed packets in photo sleeve pages. Record the weather or major weather events. Record visitors like pollinators and birds. Every year, I write down the date and location where I planted each vegetable cultivar in my vegetable garden. The purpose is to ensure that I can follow crop rotation guidelines. I also record the days to harvest from the seed packet and actual harvest dates.
Record successes, failures, likes and dislikes. Take time to do this monthly or at least once per season. Walk through the garden with a pen and your journal. Take notes of tasks to accomplish shorter-term goals and projects. Which perennials must be thinned, moved, treated, or removed? What trees and shrubs will need pruning in the winter? What vegetable plants (and how many) should be grown next year? Which seeds will need to be ordered? From what grower?
I would encourage you to use your journal to help with long-term goals, plans, and designs. My 5-year plan is to modify perennial and mixed beds so that they require less maintenance. Highlighting this plan may keep me on track when I am at the spring, summer, and fall nursery!
There can be unexpected value in recording your impressions and observations. One of my favorite observations was from April 20, 2017. It had been a remarkably calm and warm spring. Therefore, late winter, early- and mid-spring blooms were all happening simultaneously. It was glorious! I recorded 42 unique species of weeds, herbs, perennials, shrubs, trees, and fruit trees that were blooming on that day in my garden. Looking at those notes still makes me marvel at the wonder of Mother Nature. Making another observation in my journal led me to add more blue blossoms, for example, globe thistle (Echinops spp.), so that my front perennial border would bloom in red, white, and blue on the 4 of July.
If you aren’t already in the habit of keeping a journal, schedule time for it daily, weekly, or monthly until journaling becomes a habit. Find a way to make the process enjoyable. Couple it with a cup of hot cocoa and a cookie. When summer comes, take the time to sit outside, enjoy your garden, and write down your observations. Find a gardening friend to journal alongside. Make your journal fun and beautiful. Pick up some colored pencils and draw the colors in your garden bed or even a single variegated leaf. If you already keep a journal, challenge yourself to use it in a new and interesting way.
Remember, there are no good journals or bad journals. A garden journal is for your use— to provide what you want and need. The beginning of a new year always signals a reset. Winter is a great time for planning and organizing. Treat yourself to a gift of a new garden journal and resolve to fill it up with everything about your garden, your goals, and challenges. Just do it!
Author
Susan Marquesen
Master Gardener and Master Food Preserver, Allegheny County
