Recording your garden

Those who know me know I have a passion for recording things, family tree, endless blogs, photographs, journals, diaries, writing of any sort so it is no surprise I have gathered 'data' on my various gardens in many homes over my lifetime.  

This is one thing I do every year in June.  I try to find a dry day around the middle of the month to record my garden so I can see how it changes year on year.  I have just done this year's record and thought I'd share the idea with you - doesn't take five minutes and you'll always have a record of what you did.  Looking at them today, we were saying we were surprised I had a vegetable border for four years, we thought it was only a couple and we were reminded of the caravan we had and the barbecue we never used!

I take eight photographs one from each corner diagnally across to the other corner and one in the centre of each side directly across from the opposite border - pretty much eight points of the compass in our garden.  Here's the record of one of the corners.  This one faces North-east.

2007 - we had just moved in and had got the patio down.  We had a small decked area in the corner with a couple of seats.  I wanted it because the other corner of the garden was lobbed off diagonally and I like things to balance.

2008 - we have added a summerhouse in the corner and the tree seems to have gone missing from the bottom border?.... but we have gained a pot on the patio.  The box hedge around the patio is just showing above the concrete.  The irrigation system is in - I can see a line to the pot.

2009 - the tree has reappeared but the side border has turned into a vegetable garden.  the patio pot seems to have had a baby

 2010 - looks more settled.  The bottom border is looking good and the veggies are thriving.

 2011 - the year I forgot to do the photos so had to find something that would do.  Quite glad I did as this one shows the lovely noisette rose doing its thing on the patio with its feet in lavender.

 2012 - now everywhere looks as though someone lives here.  The summerhouse was my workshop that summer

 2013 - I've moved back into the house to work and the vegetables has been replaced with a flower border and tree.

2014 - So here we are right now with the conservatory being built so it will all look very different next year!

If you are interested the best way to view these is to click on the first photo which will set it to full screen and then you can flick through and see how much it changes each year.