Monday Matters: 7 Reasons Why You Need to Keep a Garden Planner and Journal

Over the years, I’ve kept various records of plants we’ve put in our garden, and I’ve saved all of the plastic information cards that come stuck in the pots when you buy them. I’ve also made notes in my bullet journal and even drawn plant ID cards for some of my favourite purchases. However, these resources are in an array of different folders and notebooks and often I can’t locate what I need when I want to check something. So, I decided I would like to keep a garden planner / journal and I found the perfect folder when I visited one of my local garden centres and asked my husband if he would like to buy it to give me for Christmas. Of course, any notebook or file would have done, but as someone who adores beautiful stationery, this one provides the motivation to use it regularly and has lots of different papers and pockets to put things in.

I’ve been using the folder since the very beginning of Spring 2023 and so far I’m finding it a really useful record keeping tool. I’m also hoping that by documenting everything garden related, it will help me to feel a real sense of achievement and begin to recognise that all of our efforts are paying off (even when I feel like it’s a constant battle to keep on top of the weeds or a few of our plants aren’t looking their best).

What is a garden planner and journal?

A garden planner and journal is a paper based or electronic place to store everything related to your outdoor spaces and even your houseplants if you so wish. As well as making you super organised it can provide, for example, a place to keep track of what you’ve planted and where, journal space to evaluate what has worked and what hasn’t, pages to record and plan seasonal tasks, list of to dos (AKA jobs for the weekend!), photo showing different parts of your garden over time so you can see and celebrate your achievements over the months and years. You can customise your records to suit your needs but you might include details of your soil in different parts of the garden, information about your various plants and notes on how well they have done depending on their location, ideas you have collected from magazine and online articles, issues you’ve had with some of your plants such as garden pests or poor growth, labelled sketches of flower beds or the garden as a whole, lists of your seed purchases and even a garden wishlist – the possibilities are endless.

Why should I keep a garden planner and journal?

In a nutshell, keeping a garden planner and journal, which you regularly write in, will make you a better and more efficient gardener and enable you to get so much pleasure from your space no matter whether it’s a few containers on your balcony, a tiny plot or a vast amount of land which keeps you constantly busy. Here are my top seven reasons why you should start a garden planner and journal today:

It helps you remember what’s where

Drawing a labelled sketch of the different parts of your garden such as flower beds, vegetable sections, corner plots, rockery etc helps you to remember exactly what you’ve got and where things are located. It can also provide information such as the particular colour or variety of plants.

I’ve also created a list of containers (size, colour and location helps here), what’s in each and when the plant grows and flower so that I know what’s going to pop up when and also, if it doesn’t come back, I can record and evaluate accordingly.

It’s a good idea to sketch your garden each season so you can see what’s in flower at particular times, which veggies are currently being grown and where your evergreen / deciduous shrubs and trees are. Then you can add in your annuals and assess whether there are any gaps which you want to fill.

You can create and maintain weekly and monthly plans

If you love your garden and want it to look good, you need to regularly dedicate time and energy to gardening. My planner contains weekly overviews for each season where you can record particular jobs that need doing each year and also ‘Jobs for the Weekend’ pages for running task lists. It’s really satisfying ticking them all off and it helps us to see what we still need to do and estimate how long each job will take. These task lists can then be revisited next year.

I like to go on reliable websites like Gardener’s World and RHS plus other UK based sites to look at what I should be doing each month and then handpick jobs specific to our garden. I also follow a few UK YouTube accounts for ideas too. You could even keep a list of useful websites in your journal somewhere too.

A place to log new additions to your garden spaces

All gardeners love going to local garden centres and nurseries to choose new perennials plus annual bedding plants for instant colour. You can record all of these in a list, stating where they were purchased and how much they cost, plus key information front the plant labels. getting new bits and pieces for their garden whether it’s a perennial plant, a new pot, a comfortable bench or chair and cushions, so And your new additions list doesn’t just have to be a space for greenery, you can also record new pieces of furniture such as a gorgeous new bench and bright cushions or a little potting bench, atmospheric solar powered or mains operated lights, new paths or replacement gravel, patio slabs, hanging baskets, rockeries, storage spaces such as a little shed or a box to put soft furnishings over winter, and wildlife friendly pieces such as a pond, bug hotel, hedgehog house or toad abode! Then, when you can’t recall how long you’ve had raised bed, you can check your records instead of trying to establish how long it’s lasted from memory.

A good chart to have in your planner is a record of seeds which you plan to set, when and where e.g. in trays indoors or directly into prepared veg beds or outdoor pots, how many to set (usually dependent on size and desired crop), date to set and germination times. You can also include a section for any notes, so, for example we find that our two courgette seeds for the two large plants we want don’t always germinate so we tend to put a couple in each plug or create more plugs.

You can find examples of seed charts on Pinterest for you to draw up (preferably on gridded paper), or, if you’re pushed for time, you can purchase printables on Etsy.

Helps you track progress over time

The other week I found some photographs of my husband sitting out in our back garden a couple of years after we’d moved into our house. I decided to print them out as there’s a huge difference between how the space looked then and what it looks like now less than 10 years later. The transformation is amazing and if we didn’t have a photographic record, I don’t think we would be able to fully appreciate all that we’ve achieved. You might not have photos from a decade ago (or maybe you do?) but why not start recording now and see how your space has changed in one, two or even ten years?

A useful spot to record successes, challenges + complete failures and reflect on why

We’ve been developing our garden for over ten years now and have had many successes but probably just as many failures. Some of the failures are permanently stuck in my memory, like the fact that every time we have tried to grow lupins, no matter where we got the plants from, the ended up covered in aphids which made my skin crawl! Likewise, some of our complete successes still take pride of place in our flowerbeds such as the beautiful, long lasting and colourful geums. However, there are many more triumphs and disappointments that I wish I’d written down and reflected on. Here’s a list of aspects of gardening which you might like to make a few notes on:

• garden pests – what specific plants they’ve eaten, when they eat (daytime, night time, particular times of year, following particular weather etc), thoughts about why they eat e.g. slugs and snails love to munch on our dahlia so this year we’ve potted one up, covered the soil in grit and placed it in the front garden porch away from other plants and it’s doing much better
• plant diseases and treatment e.g. our hollyhocks get rust every year so I inspect them early on and removed infected leaves quickly and dispose of them
• plants which don’t like the conditions – too dry, too wet, hate clay soil, not enough sun/shade etc and whether they are to be moved or just dug up
• weather related challenges (e.g. storms, continuous rain, dry spells etc.) and how specific plants coped
• seed germination failures – dates planted and when replacements set or when new seeds purchased and set
• weed related issues e.g. we have a huge problem with celandine and it’s a constant battle to get rid of them, I spend 10 minutes every day on their removal and I’m glad when they die back by mid May

I’m sure you probably have many more ideas but hopefully these are enough to get you started.

A place to dream, make wishlists, include inspirational images, identify your short and long term goals and make plans of action

If, like me, you have a beautifully, colourful and well maintained garden on your vision board for the future, it’s a good idea to have a section in your journal to include wishlists, inspiring photographs, goals and action steps and maybe even a written explanation of what you want your dream garden to look like and how you want to feel when in it. You can then check in regularly with this section of your journal and see how well you are progressing with your goals. You can also note down things from your wishlist to look for next time you go shopping to one of your local garden centres.

Final words…

As you start your record keeping, remember that your file doesn’t need to be perfect and will most certainly evolve over time. You might want to start by simply taking a few photos of how your space looks now and then making a few notes of some of the plants which are located in each section. Or, if you like drawing and creating diagrams, you might take some squared paper to draw different parts of your plot and label the names of plants currently growing there. I can also recommend colouring in the plants that are currently in flower so you can see the balance across your plot.

Then, on another occasion, you might make a basic to do list (try Googling garden jobs for June and your specific location) for the month and tick tasks off as you complete them. You could even add a few jobs that are already complete or underway to get some easy and satisfying ticks by the end of the week.

I hope you’ve found today’s post useful and it has inspired you to give this form of planning, record keeping and journalling a go. Let me know what you choose to do first and how you get on.