Keeping a Garden Journal

The best gardening advice comes from your own experience. Books, magazines, and experts help—but who knows what worked (and failed) in your garden better than you? Memory fades: which lily variety three years ago? When and how much fertilizer? A journal captures it all.

Recording activities may feel like interruption, but prevents repeated mistakes and boosts productivity. Log failures too—repeating them wastes time.

Journal Formats

Simple notebook to digital apps. Graph paper useful for scaled sketches showing plant/bulb positions.

What to Record

• Complete plant names + variety. One tomato may delight; another disappoint. Notes guide future orders.
• Source. For reordering or troubleshooting.
• Planting date & exact location. Track age of perennials/shrubs/trees. Critical for late-emerging bulbs/perennials—avoid planting atop them. Diagrams/photos work well.
• Fertilizer applications. Type, amount, date. Plans next feeding; helps troubleshoot growth issues.
• Pests & actions. Pest + date appeared—alerts for next year (same timing). What worked? What didn't?
• Flowering/fruiting times. Plan continuous color. Vegetable/fruit harvest tracking = steady supply.
• Special care needs. Annual pruning, deadheading, staking reminders. Fragrance, foliage color/texture, flower color, fruit flavor—worth noting for future design.
• Photographs. Thousand words! Remember winning combos and ones needing tweaks. Recreate successful annual/container plantings. Document garden maturity over years.

You are your garden's best information source—use it!