Gardening Journal Record of Garden and Memories

December 10, 2011 by Robin Plaskoff Horton

Garden journal photo: Seayard on Flickr

Winter is a great time for planning, dreaming, and collecting your ideas for recording in a garden journal. There’s no “garden variety’ garden journal. One person’s journal may be solely for record keeping while another’s might be a chronicle of experiences, a memory book–or both. Whether it be a depository for garden thoughts and dreams or simply a reference tool, many gardener’s feel that their journals are indispensable.

Moleskine’s Garden Journal Gift Box includes Gardening Journal, Gardening Pockets, 12 Seed Envelopes.

Your journal can be as simple as a loose leaf binder or as deluxe as you like. You can make it yourself or purchase one like Moleskine’s Gardening Journal. The journal can contain pockets for receipts and envelopes for seeds, photos, momentos of yourself. Your garden journal is a reflection of you.

From the garden journal of Jeanette Yee Sclar, Mistress of Longears

Your Garden Journal May Include
• Planting and transplanting dates for seeds and plants
• Birds and the bees: wildlife observations, pollinators and pests
• Favorite suppliers and costs for seeds, plants, other materials
• Mother Natures’s patterns and cycles: weather details like rainfall and frost dates
• Plant characteristics, germination, bloom, harvest dates
• Fertilizer types and dates applied
• Reference materials: articles, magazine clippings, book lists, course materials, favorite websites (like Urban Gardens!)
• Garden plan: perhaps to scale on graph paper or drawn free hand including layouts of beds and plantings
• Daily and weekly activities
• Recipes for harvested veggies and herbs
• Wish list: a future pond or fountain, fence or pergola, new furniture or garden sculpture

Your journal may contain seed envelopes.

Benefits of Keeping a Journal
• Makes you observant
• Helps you to expand on your ideas
• Keeps you from losing ideas, pictures, receipts
• Lets you to track your progress, view accomplishments, learn from mistakes

From the garden journal of Vicky Williamson

A Personal Journey
Whatever you choose to record in your journal, it will all be there for you to look back on at a later date: your feats and failures, your best and worst laid plans, a personal keepsake and place of reflection and education. Perhaps inside is a “mood-board” of colors and textures you hope to incorporate in a future plan. You may have ollected photos taken with your phone or digital camera, gathered momentos of your travels to other gardens. Whatever your garden journal is to you, it will certainly be more than a record of your garden, it will be a snapshot of you.

Pages from Moleskine Passions Gardening Journal. Photo: Seayard on Flickr

Do you have a garden journal? Please comment below and share with us how you use your journal!

Moleskine Gardening Gift Box $59.95
This 7 x 10.25 inch boxed set includes:
• 240-page Gardening Journal with embossed cover.
• 3 Ribbon placeholders
• Double expandable inner pocket to stash soil articles and other clippings.
• Informative pages with plant and pot information
• Garden logs
• 5 Themed sections
• 202 Adhesive labels
• 10 Additional blank acid-free paper pages
• Gardening Pockets
• 12 Seed Envelopes

Moleskine Passions Gardening Journal $19.95
Just the 240 page journal.

Category: Birds, Bees, and Butterflies, Books, Finding, Garden Design, Great Finds
Tags: record keeping
Enjoyed this post? Subscribe to Urban Gardens!
share | Email e-mail a friend | comments (5)

http://localecologist.blogspot.com/ Georgia

My garden records were never as lovely as the ones included in your post!
http://outfromundermyhat.blogspot.com Jules

Hmmm, this beautiful garden diary makes my scratchy old thing look rather bad. http://outfromundermyhat.blogspot.com/2010/08/garden-planning-on-paper-in-winter.html – here is a picture of it, but however, it works for me, and I don’t know how I used to get on before I started writing down where things should go, and when things got put in. I also record how quickly certain seeds germinate (case in point: I had rather disappointing results from some kale seeds which according to the packet were still good for another year and only about 2 germinated, yet other ones which supposedly expired last year gave me a bumper crop), I weigh the harvest (also very telling), and it is very handy for calculating when the potatoes will be ready, as I always used to forget when they went in. So I really do find my garden journal a godsend.
http://www.csqtownplanning.com.au/request-a-quote town planner melbourne

Nice this is great article regarding urban planning. Urban planning can be described as a technical and political process concerned with the welfare of people, control of the use of land, design of the urban environment including transportation and communication networks, and protection and enhancement of the natural environment.
Robin Plaskoff Horton

Thanks for the share Jules!
Marnie Plunkett

I make three entries: one in the early spring, one in mid summer, and one in the late fall. Each consists of a to do list for the next season and observations, new plants, etc. I found writing every day or even weekly made it feel like more of a chore. I’ll have to take a closer look at my journalist process.