I wish I could remember from year to year, which corner of our courtyard has better light for my thriving chocolate mint plant. Can you remember the most significant details of your beloved gardens from year to year?
In “The Garden Journal: The Essentials” master gardener Liane Doxey has developed a structured journal that allows green thumbs to record their garden plans, challenges and triumphs. Her gardener’s log will allow users to record the bloom cycle of their plants, seed germination dates, purchases, planning diagrams and much more.
Doxey notes that most experts recommend keeping a journal to develop a nuanced understanding of their gardens’ soil qualities, plantings, strengths and weaknesses, and this journal fits the bill. ( I keep a sort of recipe-journal… why can’t I maintain one for my garden next year?)
While many gardeners love the journal idea in theory, many skip the practice because they are not sure what to record and when. This book takes out all the guesswork with careful formatting and checklists to log. It allows any gardener to make a careful inventory of what they want to remember from one season to the next.
Whether you’re a novice, master gardener or somewhere in between, anyone interested in growing plants will find this customized log helpful in their own daily practice. As a gardener who forgets what she plants where from year-to-year, I’d love a good gardening journal. .
The author developed this gardening journal after being unable to find one that had anything other than blank pages. She wanted a reference that would include planning pages, purchase logs and bloom periods – so she went about creating one of her own. Over the years, her format and log entries evolved till she arrived at this final version that is suitable for all gardeners.
“The Garden Journal” is available online. Tell us at Organic Spa Magazine — do you garden green even through the Fall?