Why Every Gardener Needs a Visual Diary

Your phone and social media love to remind you of what you did on this day a year or five ago. It’s a good way to be surprised at how things have changed and how your kids have grown. It can also tell you useful things about your gardens of yesteryear: when the tulips opened, where your peonies bloomed, or when the grass died.

While keeping a garden diary is a thing, writing things down doesn’t have the same effect as taking pictures, and if your ADHD doesn’t allow you to keep a consistent written journal, taking pictures is a much easier commitment – and you’re probably already doing a lot. part of them. still work.

How to start a visual diary of your garden

You are probably already catching good things to communicate, flowers, inflorescences, foliage, lawn mower stripes. (If not, then we should talk about #gardentok.)

To get a bigger picture, find a few easy-to-identify spots on your yard—under a streetlight, next to a tree, etc.—places where you can stand over and over again to take successive photos. Add a Google reminder to take pictures from each location on the same day of every month. This will give you a wide view of the yard so you can see how it changes from month to month during the season.

Finally, make sure you also capture misses. Walk around the garden. Look at the tulips, mark places that could be used in addition, and take a picture. (You won’t remember these spots when the tulips are gone in the fall.) Is there a dead zone in the garden? Take a photo. Grass dying in one place? Document it. Is the grate hanging incorrectly? Should the aisle be widened?

You then need to tag your photos, which may require an extra step. Google does a great job with auto-tagging, allowing you to search for “tulip” or “garden” without tags and probably get great results. But you can always use your sad winter months away from the garden to add to an album or label them with more descriptive labels.

Here are a few ways to use your diary once you launch it:

Extend your garden’s color season

Most gardeners focus on summer bloom: peonies, then irises, then echinaceas, and then zinnias. To extend this color before and after the season, use your diary to see what showed up in March and September and where. I was able to see my late blooms (critantems and scabioses) and I plan to expand these plantings next year. I was able to see when the first flowers (tulips and daffodils) start to bloom each year and figure out which ones will bloom even earlier so I can enjoy more flowers in my yard. (Evergreens don’t seem sexy when you’re impulsively shopping in May, but these photos of your desert garden in January could be a good wake-up call.)

It also helps to see how the colors change with the season, so I can move the plants around and align the plants to better create color stories and vary the texture in height. Having the photos automatically include dates helps me understand what will bloom at the same time.

Visualize bare spots

When I walk in the garden, I often notice bare spots that would look better with a few light bulbs or something. By the time the bulbs are planted, I can’t remember where they were, and the tulips have long since been replaced by later flowering plants. The visual diary acts like a treasure map so I can pinpoint exactly where the hole is at certain times of the year.

Sometimes the plants fight, but this is not enough to pull them out in time. Looking at the visual diary reminds me that the plant needs special care and attention. If he doesn’t recover, I’ll know I won’t let him wallow for another year.

Track erosion, puddles and wear

Gardens are like frogs in boiling water: you don’t always notice what is changing, because it happens very slowly. Seeing a photo of the clean edges of my very green, weed-free lawn 10 years ago was a real wake-up call. I realized it was time for composting and re-seeding.

Likewise, I know it’s no use solving backyard water problems in the winter, but by the time summer hits, I can’t remember exactly where the water likes to pool. Photos are everything.

Finally, and for good reason: photos of your garden are a great way to cover your ass in case you ever need them to file an insurance claim.