[Joanna Savage]

Here's a query for Fermi and his most wonderful collection of FLOWERING bulbs. What records do you think should be kept? I suppose the days of index cards and photos are long gone. But e.g. would you record each year's performance and the location of the plant. I suppose locations can change without your help. That must be quite a task that you have, but well worth preserving the detail of such a fabulous collection, growing well.

[Fermi]

Hi Joanna,
I rely a lot on labels, so the place looks a lot like a mouse cemetery 
I try to keep a record of plants I buy and often (but not always) record where in the garden I've planted them.
Being very last century I still use exercise books to do a lot of my recording and keep an annual diary for gardening to record when new flowers first open, what seeds I've sown, that sort of thing.
I've often thought of using index cards but I suppose I should invest in some sort of recording system on computer. I'm sure there's a spread sheet or similar program out there somewhere!
I believe keeping records is important but even in a small garden it's easy to lose track of things and sometimes it's interesting to find a record of a plant in the diary and think "now where did I plant that?" and hunt around to find it! Sometimes I just find the label
Whenever we renovate an area of the garden we uncover labels that make me realise how many things we've planted and how many haven't survived. That could be depressing but most gardeners get a healthy dose of amnesia when it comes to plant losses!
cheers
fermi

[Joanna Savage]

Thanks for your comments Fermi. I think you must also have a very good visual memory. I like the idea of your worn exercise book doing the rounds of the garden with you. And it is reassuring to hear that even experts lose plants.

[Trevor Australis]

I've kept a garden diary - A4 size pages for more than 40 yrs. The volumes take up quite a deal of shelf space in my study. I'd have to admit I'm not very methodical about maintaining a uniform format for my entries. Some are fully written up with sketches of beds and where what is planted but sometimes when I am busy I just stick in invoices etc for bulbs and plants purchased. I do paste in all the seed packets I sow but rarely list failures. My garden will be Paradise for some future Horto-archaeologist - so many little plastic labels buried everywhere. I also paste in photo's, post-cards, letters, n/paper clippings, business cards and other items related to my gardening life. Sometimes I even drag it out for garden visitors to sign, esp when we have an Open Garden or a tour group coming through.

[Umbrian]

My garden diaries/notes are all over the place.....I start off the year full of good intentions with a new notebook (a bit like I remember the first days of a new school year when, fired with enthusiasm, I would promise myself to "do better" ) During the early months here it is easy to keep good records but once spring arrives, with more opportunities to actually work in the garden and increasing work to be done, my good intentions quickly fall by the wayside. Then the summer visitors start arriving and time is even more at a premium......odd notes are made anywhere and everywhere and added to my pile of "things that are important/ need attention" etc
Perhaps this winter I will make an effort to sort through all my notebooks and the hundreds of scraps of paper that I have jotted notes down on although whether some of them will make any sense now I very much doubt.

[Trevor Australis]

Getting all those scraps sorted and put somewhere - in a scrap book or diary is a good start to not lose things you didn't want to lose. I use my diaries as aides memoire for writing so even tho' everything going back years was 'safe' I could rarely find anything when I wanted it eg the diary I kept when I was last in France, so I got busy with a permanent white marker, got all 40+ yrs worth of diaries and sorted them by year and marked them on the front cover. Now I know what's what. I even wrote special highlights on the front of some as well so I know where significant records will be. But I too, lapse when the weather calls me out into the garden. VSW and her husband had servants, esp a cook-house-keeper, so they had more free time after a day gardening to write up their rough garden notes and their proper diaries. Ah, the luxury of it.