Keeping a Garden Journal

The invaluable garden journal

By Amy McDowell

My garden adventures—all of them—are documented.  Even the time I accidentally splattered myself with the slimy guts of two dozen plump four-inch tomato hornworms. Eew. Yes, it was gross.  Gardening is messy, but I learn things all the time.

I record everything in my garden journal. I now have about fifteen years’ worth of helpful and humorous lessons documented. I wrote about waiting three years for the first bloom on my fragrant bourbon rose, finding a baby deer in the woods behind my home, and the thrill of seeing a dog-tooth violet bloom for the first time. There are crazy and delightful stories like the time masses of praying mantis hatched in my car when I left two egg casings on the warm dashboard. I have a record of the time a ground squirrel nearly drowned in the whisky barrel and the time a raccoon was trapped under the heavy bowl of the large antique bird bath after he accidentally tipped it over on himself. I documented every deer sighting, hawk sighting, and screech owl.

My journals include recipes for homemade hummingbird nectar, deer repellent, insect spray, and even rooting hormone. I sketch and chronicle ideas I have tried, such as the homemade scent dispensers for fox urine to repel rabbits, and I jot down ideas that I have seen in other gardens, such as using cardboard boxes for rose cones.

The practical side of a garden journal is to record the botanical and common names of new plants I put in. I sketch where I planted them, and sometimes even document where I bought them and how much I paid. Sometimes they grow beautifully, and other times they die off. It is helpful to read through old garden journals and remember the successes and failures.

My journals are an invaluable archive of my joys and blunders in the garden. My lesson about hornworms is that when you go about ferociously plucking them from a datura and stomping them to goo with your right foot, the guts will spurt far and wide—all over your left leg. Later you will look down and wonder, “What is this green crusty stuff all over my pants? – Oh, sick!”