How do you keep track of things in your garden?

With the exception of the odd instagram post, I’m pretty much a failure at documenting mine.  I romanticize early botanists and how they gathered scientific observations into tea stained art projects.  I’m pretty sure their pressed flowers, little charts and graphs and hand drawn sketches are the original inspiration for stay-at-home-mom scrapbooking pyramid schemes.

I’d like to be better. I know some level of record-keeping would be useful and might actually make me a better gardener.  So, in casting about for a system that I will realistically maintain, I asked myself, what kind of blogger would I be if I didn’t develop a healthy over-reliance on flat lay photography?  I mean, I’ve hardly used the medium at all and what better way to jump on the bandwagon than to create an arrangement of what is currently growing and catching my eye?

So a meditation is born.  I’ve marked my calendar for the first of every month to take a walk and gather things that demand my attention.  I’ll bring them inside and smartly arrange them on a chic piece of marble that I keep around for just this sort of thing. (seriously, I do have this heavy as hell random piece of marble that I inherited from the previous homeowner 14 years ago and have done nothing with it)

Once I have the picture, I’ll use some fun little apps to label it up on my phone.

Maybe this paperless version of documentation will work for me.  Good habits are as hard to create as bad habits are to break so I know I have to keep it simple if I stand any chance of being successful in this little endeavor.

Do you document anything about your garden making efforts?  If so, what works?  What is important to note? how do you keep track of it?

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Inspired by jardinsurlaseine’s garden of textures in Paris