I mentioned in my post on Sunday that I had been sorting through garden related paperwork over Christmas and how if I was to have any New Year’s resolutions it would be to keep better records. Since then I have been stream lining the chaotic pile of paper. I now have a propagation recording book and have entered some sowing records from the other week, who knows I may even remember to use it past March this year, a diary and a couple of notebooks which I take to meetings or garden visits to record those essential plant names and tips in.
However, I was left with a pile of magazines with various page corners turned over and also a pile of magazine cuttings. So I have decided to take a retro approach and scrap-book them in a kind of pre-Pinterest way.
It’s amazingly therapeutic cutting out articles and pictures and sticking them into a book with the odd note. For me its a real trip back to my childhood. My mother has a photograph of me aged about 6 sitting in bed, cutting out things from magazines. I was a sickly child suffering with tonsillitis, asthma and sinusitis until I had an operation around the age of 7 and I used to be ill in bed quite a lot. I think this was my mother’s idea of entertainment, it is certainly something which is strangely comforting to me to do.
So in my gardening scrapbook I am including bits on plants that look interesting, images of gardens that appeal to me or where I particularly like a planting combination and interesting garden projects. In some cases I have cut out a whole article such as the one on hardy orchids above but in others like the one on a French garden I have just cut out those images that appeal and made a note of where the garden is and its web address – who knows one day I may get to visit.
I think so far it is quite attractive and is certainly something I will look through unlike my Pinterest boards which I have no trouble adding to but rarely look back through (so what’s the point!). I am so pleased with it that I might do the same for the embroidery and other crafting magazines I have.
