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Notes From the Garden
Notes from the GardenHandy Gardening Journal Puts it all in Perspective
By Madeleine Wilde
Feb 25, 1999 -- Contrary to that nagging, guilty feeling in your gut, there still is time to start a gardening journal this year. And it does not have to be in a fancy, gilt-edged, leather bound book with gaping, empty, white or cream-colored expensive paper! If you do own one or several of those gorgeous and perhaps mostly empty books, you might want to think of giving them as gifts to those truly talented friends of yours who do keep exquisite journals. I keep my garden notes in my daily appointment book. Some days the notes entirely fill the space and curl around the edges of a particular day while other days the notes just describe the intensity of a storm. But this has been the only way I got started with keeping any sort of effective notes on the garden.You will find, after a few years, what sort of information is most important for your type of gardening. Weather conditions will probably be found in all "journals," but I like to include other aspects of life that profoundly impact the state of the garden. Great-Aunt Maud's visit is the sort of thing that always takes time away from the garden. There are also the trips out of town, the dreadful bout with the flu, or the project at work that suddenly consumes all your energy and time. I find that I use these notes to alleviate my sense of utter laziness when I do finally get to spend some time in the garden and find that there is so much to be done. I am able to put it all into perspective, realizing that indeed my life is full of activities other than those in the garden.
The garden notes really come into their own a few years down the road. You will be amazed by some of the details. That 2-foot shrub, sold to you as a "slow-grower," is now impacting your neighbor's front walkway and it was planted only three years ago. Or you might find it exciting to know that the bulbs which were planted many months past the optimum planting time continue to perform with exuberance and even without the recommended fertilizing. Again, you will find what aspects of your garden are most worthy of taking notes on. The pre-printed garden journals which expect you to fill in rain amount, seed planting dates, blooming times, etc. are just too rigid and guilt-making for me. I simply cannot keep them filled in. Yet I stand in awe and admiration when I see a well-kept, detailed garden journal. And instead of feeling utter rage-inducing frustration with my own ineptitude, I have come to rely on my random notes to bring amusing and useful guidance as the years have gone by.
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