Diversity of plants

Winters can be long, and dark, and, obviously, not suitable to growing a garden. Over the course of those winter months you may forget what worked and what didn’t the previous year or you may have a brainstorm while gazing at the abundant supply of poinsettias at the grocery store. Disney’s horticulturists recommend journaling over the course of the year in order to improve your garden the following year. They recommend two types of journals that work best: shoebox journals and detailed journals.

A shoebox journal could contain anything that won’t fit easily inside the pages of a paper journal, such as seeds and seed packets, bookmarks, informational guides, and research materials (books, printouts, etc.). A detailed journal is a regular notebook-type journal that contains your landscape plan, irrigation plan, flower bed designs, pictures of your garden and examples of ideas for your next garden, documentation of plant successes and failures, and a pencil case equipped to hold seeds and a pen or pencil. The detailed journal will start to bulge as various materials are added to the pages, so a journal with an attached rubber band to secure the journal may come in handy.

As we approach the autumn, these journals may very well help you enrich your garden next spring.