How to Start a Garden Diary

Posted January 29, 2019by Oli Southward

Let January mark the start of a brand-new garden adventure! There’s no better time of year to start keeping a garden diary. Writing about your gardening experience is a simple and easy way to keep a record of your progress and see how much you’ve grown as a gardener. Find out how to start a garden diary, including everything you’ll need, and some fun ideas for gardening projects throughout the year with this handy guide.

What You’ll Need 

Something to Write On:

It’s up to you how to organise your garden diary. If you want a simple day-by-day account of how things are going in your garden than we recommend using a planner style diary with the dates already entered. If you’re going to be tracking your progress less frequently (a couple of times a week/month) then why not try a lined notebook where you can add as much detail as you want?

More artistic journalists – and those who don’t struggle writing in a straight line – might appreciate a completely blank booklet within which they can both write and draw pictures of their achievements. If you’re a fan of doing things digitally then you can always track your progress via an online blog instead.

Camera (optional):

Pictures make the best mementos and there are plenty of websites you can get pictures from your phone printed and sent straight to your home. A digital camera is likely to take higher quality pictures, but you may find printing them to be slightly more costly. You could even go old school with an instant camera like an Instax or a Kodak Printomatic for pictures you can immediately add to your diary. Of course, there’s no printing required if you’re keeping a digital journal so it’s really a matter of preference!

What to Write About

Keeping a daily garden journal can be very relaxing but, depending on the size and scale of your garden, you might find that it doesn’t change that much day to day. We recommend documenting projects or progress that you know you’ll see results on. January is the perfect time to sow a beautiful flower bed full of Sweet Peas, Lobelias, and Begonias (all January starters). You could also try your hand at growing delicious strawberries or aubergines, both of which will flower and bear fruit as the weather starts to get warmer.

Plan Ahead

One of the benefits of keeping a garden diary is that it will help you plan ahead. By sitting down and writing things out you’ll be able to set yourself goals for future projects and seasonal sowing. It can be easy to neglect the garden as the year goes on – especially when you’ve come to the end of a project – but having concrete plans for each season is a sure-fire way to see progress as a gardener.

You don’t always have to be planting to progress, either! Why not have a go at making a birdhouse or bug hotel? Or upcycling old furniture, like toolboxes or crates, into stylish and unique plant pots? At the end of the day, a garden diary is what you make of it. There’s no right or wrong way to document the time you spend in the garden because, no matter what, you’ll end up with something you can smile at and look back on this time next year.

Want to spend more time in the garden in 2019? Install artificial grass in your garden! You can always leave designated spaces for things to grow or even cover your entire garden and enjoy a wealth of potted plant projects. The possibilities are endless. Visit our shop today.