Keeping a Garden Journal

10 Ideas for What to Record to Make Your Future Gardening Years Easier and More Pleasurable

By Kathy Jentz

A few pages from my garden journal — plant tags and a map with the locations of trees and shrubs.

One of the many joys of gardening is looking back and seeing where you came from. From barren weedy lot to perennial beds bursting with color, you put the work in and it shows.

By keeping a garden journal you will be able to keep track of your progress from year to year and you’ll have a record you can constantly refer to when planning your garden in the future.

Many gardeners spend a pleasant winter’s evening going back over their past garden journals, not just as a planning tool, but for sheer amusement. To paraphrase Socrates, the unexamined garden is not worth growing.

With all the fancy scrapbooking accessories [affiliate link] available, it is easy to go overboard and be overwhelmed with the innumerable amount of information and decorations you could include in your journal. You can also keep your journal online as a blog or website or stored on your own computer.

I suggest you keep it simple. I use a 3-ring binder, notebook paper, graph paper, and I have a hole punch to add in other pages as needed.

Here is a list of things you can include in your journal: