The Evolution of a Garden Journal

By: Jamie Seitz

Whether I’m tracking my dahlia garden, reflecting on the plants I grow, or jotting down wish lists, my garden journal has evolved over the years—and it never fails to bring me joy.

In the Weeds logo

Help track and admire your garden in a journal

Sometimes you start something for one reason, and several years later, you do it for another. In my first years of gardening, I enjoyed making a color-coded garden drawing of what I was planting in different areas and beds simply for funsies. I have an affinity for colorful craft supplies, especially Sharpies^™, which was part of it. I also like to rotate my garden beds; this was an easy way to check to see if I was rotating everything evenly each year.

Now that I’m a wee bit older, I find that if I don’t map out and document my entire garden and list exactly what I grew and where, there is practically zero chance I will remember. Growing dahlias has meant I have another thing I have to track carefully because once a tuber is planted in the ground, you have no way of knowing what variety it is unless you find a way to mark it.

Garden Journal ITW illustration by Danielle Lowery-Ruscher: Illustration by Danielle Lowery-Ruscher

Garden journals are practical + fun

I teach a quarterly crafty class at my local library, and last year I had the idea to help participants create garden journals. I used it specifically to show what I was planting in each garden bed and the varieties of dahlias I’d grown so I could remember what each was when I dug them up in the fall.

Other ideas I encouraged the class to include in the journal pages were different groups of companion plants and lists of plants to avoid placing together.I’ll be honest, this was more for me because sometimes that information just leaves my brain even though I’ve researched it one thousand times.

Over the winter, I started learning to paint with watercolor. While I stared out over my cold, dead backyard garden, I set up in the dining room and painted small 3x3-inch squares of my garden in full bloom. They didn’t turn out half bad, and I pasted a few of them into my journal as well.

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A new creative outlet

I have a list of ideas I plan to include next year. For example, I recently watched a lovely video about how to press tiny flowers, and I think they would be a perfect addition for my garden journal next spring. I also thought about making a fun collage from the seed packets I use, especially if I try a few new heirloom seeds.

And now that my honey and I have our new sitting area and fire pit in the garden completed and our children are mostly out of the house, I plan to sit out back with a cocktail and do some journal writing because what the heck else am I going to do with all this free time? Grab a notebook and join me!

True or false? Jamie loves to collect journals and special notebooks almost as much as she loves to write in them. True... but I don’t see how that is any of your business!