My Gardening Journal

Whether you’re planting your very first raised bed or refining a well-loved garden, it helps to have one steady place for plans, notes, and “remember this for next year.”

My Gardening Journal by Sarah Simon (@themintgardener) and Colin Simon is a 52-week garden planner and logbook designed to support you through a full year in the garden. It blends practical advice with weekly tracking pages, so you can experiment, learn from each season, and slowly build a garden that fits your life and your space.

How this journal supports your garden

Across the year, you’ll find:

• A 52-week planner with space each week for to-do lists, observations, and reminders for next season
• Clear, beginner-friendly guidance on understanding your growing zone, soil, sun exposure, and watering needs
• Tips for starting seeds, transplanting, succession planting, and extending your harvest
• Best practices for preventing and managing common pests and diseases

You can start at the beginning of the year or whenever your growing season begins, and use the weekly pages as a gentle check-in rather than another rigid task list.

Planning and tracking tools

To help you design and refine your space, the journal also includes:

• Dot grid pages for sketching beds, containers, and layout ideas
• Charts for logging what you plant, where you planted it, and how each variety performs
• Sun-mapping charts to record how much light different areas receive through the day and across the season

Over time, this becomes a personal reference book for your specific garden—not just general advice.

Why we carry it

At The Commonplace Company, planning is an act of care—for yourself, your people, and the spaces you tend. My Gardening Journal offers a grounded, practical way to care for your garden: a place to keep what you’re learning season by season, so next year’s decisions feel a little clearer and more confident.