DIY Network

Basic Garden Scrapbook Basic Garden Scrapbook From "Ask DIY Gardening" episode DADG-106

Jessie Mack Burns offers suggestions for documenting your growing successes with a garden scrapbook.

Keeping a scrapbook of your plants is a great way to keep track of how your garden grows. As you update it from year to year, you can see which plants performed up to par, which ones came up short and which ones you had to send packing.

Here are the basics for what you'll want to include in your garden scrapbook:

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	Figure A
	Figure B
	Figure C
	Figure D

• Start with a thick three-ring binder that can hold multiple years' worth of information. Use heavy plastic paper protectors as pockets to hold the material you gather (figure A).

• Most of the times those little care instructions are the first things to get tossed. But later on, you may wish you had kept them. The scrapbook offers a great place to tuck them away. As you plant new material, either from pots or seeds, remember to slip the seed packets and plant tags into your scrapbook (figure B).
  
  
• You may want to go back and create an index card for each new plant where you can write down additional information or place your own picture of the plant next to it.
  
  
• Your scrapbook should also include any brochures (figure C) or growing-tip sheets that you pick up at the nurseries or extension offices or print off the Internet.

• Burns's favorite part of the scrapbook is the pictures she takes of her landscape from year to year and season to season (figure D). It's a great way to document the progress -- or lack of progress -- as your plants develop.

• Want to get your kids involved in gardening? Why not let them create their own page or book. They can pick out their own plants and seeds. Then you can take photos of them proudly showing off their own work in the garden.

• Another basic piece of information you should include in your scrapbook are the measurements of your green space, including any specific beds.

• It's also fun to include pictures that you've cut out of gardening magazines or catalogs. At times, these can be a real inspiration.

• Once you get your book established, the minimal upkeep will pay off. Not only will you have the valuable information for growing healthy plants, but you'll also be able to see the changes taking shape.