There are probably as many ways of keeping garden records as there are hosta varieties. Personally I use a variation of my inside organizational approach, better known as the pile method. I throw all my plant tags into a Tupperware container, then rifle through it when I forget the name of that one particular plant.
With this process I keep the majority of things tidy while carving out tiny islands of space where papers and ideas are allowed to ferment and compost in order to spark creativity. Some of my best blog posts happen at the breakfast bar where my laptop and I share a cramped surface with a leaning tower of brochures, clippings and post-it notes in my otherwise spotless kitchen.
Whatever works.
First of all, there are some gardeners who garden by touch and feel, whose very instinctive style would be inhibited by the whole procedure.
At the other end of the spectrum, I once interviewed a fellow Master Gardener who pulled out a detailed spread sheet of every action taken in his garden since day one. Need I add that he was an engineer? Now all you engineers don't send me angry emails, I'm married to one, so I know what I speak of.
For the rest of us, some sort of plant journal helps to document successes and failures, bloom times, plant locations, fertilizer schedules and such. Plant journals can come in many forms; beautifully bound little notebooks, potting-soil dusted scraps of paper, drawings and diagrams, even landscape architect renderings.
Enter technology and you have online journals and landscape planning software. As of late several innovative websites have bloomed offering a template for managing the "paperwork" of the garden, some with a social networking component.
The Mulch provides plant care alerts, recommendations, and a place to record your plants along with reviews and themed lists. Some readers might have seen my blogs posted there as well along with my "gotta have it plant lists". The Mulch is free to members and somewhat more oriented to West coast gardeners, but is broadening its scope, like with me, a Minnesota gardener.
Locally, Barb Hegman has come up with PlantJotter, a centralized and personalized online journal where you can record and then recall your gardening efforts from season to season. The website was developed with research from a survey of 2000 Master Gardeners and their journaling habits. I like that you can upload photos on it as well. You can try it out with a free trial subscription to see if it's right for you.
As I photograph my garden more extensively to illustrate this blog, I find that photos provide a visual progression of plant growth and bloom time with dates embedded automatically. This improves upon but doesn't replace the time-tested tub o' tags.
Late spring in the garden The Garden Buzz
Mid-summer in the garden, a visual record of the changes The Garden Buzz
