Sierra V. Fedorko

In last week’s post I wrote of reclaiming the lost art of winter. These colder, darker and much shorter days make way for the body to rest and for the heart with all its prayers and dreams to sit in the ground like a seed and be watered. It’s a deep breath. And oh how we need it! But, too often we miss it.

Winter is the perfect time to dream.

I’ve been on a quest to soak up each season and fall in love with the delights at hand in each one. I’ve found that winter is for dreaming. Not the kind of “dreaming” that gets squished between Christmas and New Year’s, but the kind of dreaming that lasts January-long. This is the month when I prepare my Garden Journal for the fresh year ahead.

Today, I’m not only sharing my garden journal with you, but some simple tips to help you get started on one of your own! I hope you leave this post inspired and feeling bold to dream up LIFE deep in the winter. Go fill up your journal with the good stuff. Because you can!

First thing’s first…

The key to a successful garden journal is

1. YOU.

Read to the end and you’ll be convinced.

There aren’t any hard and fast rules. Just capture the life you notice in the way you capture it best. For me, a successful garden journal looks like colored pencils, markers, highlighters, ink stamps and a variety of stickers.

To stay consistent in your journaling, keep it uncomplicated. Of course, you get to decide what uncomplicated means, but I recommend you try something like the following.

2. Capture an ENTIRE year in a two-page spread.

On one side of my Garden Journal, I jot down all the things that happened with my flowers, fruits, and veg (but mostly flowers, hehehee). You can read these things on the right side of the page spread. But on the other side I’ll also touch on what was happening in my life that year.

For example,

In 2022 you see stickers that say things like Change can be slow and try, try, try. I was early/mid postpartum for most of 2022 and it had some intense stretches! The sticker with the little “fairy” girl and the walking stick reminded me how it felt to get both kids out to the garden. Clumsy, happy, hard, disheveled. By October we were a right bumbling parade. I did it. Over and over again. What a feat! I want to remember that.

There’s no expiration date for this kind of journaling. If I come across a sticker that reminds me of 2022, or suddenly recall something I want to jot down…I just can! In whatever space is left!

For 2023, you’ll see other things that made up my life. Pocky sticks representing my daughter’s 1st birthday party (which was such a HAPPY day), and a Hobbit door because I read LOTR for the first time and spent many garden outings with my nose in those incredible books!

I’ve also featured a couple thrifted ink stamps on this page and touch on the many butterflies, bees, and the flowerbed full of surprise flowers! I don’t think I’m quite done with this page yet.

Side note: I love how my garden journal itself is all-over-the-place. It’s almost like I took note of all the good gifts, happy stories, flower surprises, and life moments of the year, then closed the journal tight and shook it up in my hands. When you open the pages, it falls like confetti–everywhere and happy.

That’s the way I like to keep a garden journal!

But as I said before, the key for a good garden journal is YOU. Your life. Your family. Your observations of nature. Your blessings from God.

Get a journal, put pencil to page, and see where it goes. See what you like. What feels effortlessly creative for you? How do you spill art onto the page? It’s going to look different than mine, because it’s supposed to.

You are you.

And I am me so I’m all over the place like confetti. HA!

So, after you let yourself be yourself in the effortlessly creative way that you are, I’d encourage you to do one last thing,

3. Choose a theme for your garden every year and place it loud and clear on the page.

For 2023, I chose “Gardens are people.” I found this phrase first by Monty Don. Gardens are beautiful in the way the individuality of each gardener is expressed, but every garden should also hold all the room in the world for the people in your life. If a garden isn’t being enjoyed by people, whatever is it for?

In 2023, I wanted to share my garden with people. This theme stamped on my 2023 page kept it in focus.

By the end of that year, Green Fables had been enjoyed by people, filled with the laughter of children, had survived sports balls on flower bushes, and crinkled happily beneath the little hands helping me pick off spent flowers.

Below you’ll see what I chose for my 2024 garden theme. (None of my garden themes have yet to include actual flowers, hehehee🤭)

Have the garden party. That’s my theme.

Since I’ve welcomed people into my garden so much more, I really want to do garden parties. And by that I mean, I just want to fill the fancy pitcher with lemonade and maybe hang a banner up a few times throughout the year. Perhaps put together a little Spring Get-Together and use up all the leftover strawberry plates from my daughter’s first birthday. Possibilities are endless if I put my mind to it.

What kind of loveliness will come from pulling out the fancier stuff and throwing it all together? Polka-dot tea cups, the fancy iced tea pitchers and the cute cloth napkins…etc., etc.! What if I just went and did it?!

There are so many ways to keep a Garden Journal. It should feel fun and easy. It should look like you in art on a page.

I didn’t know this is how I would keep a Garden Journal until I did it. And really, I stumbled upon it as I set out to log my garden and track the gardening wisdom I was learning. But this? I didn’t know it was going to look like confetti, stickers, colors, lines, squiggles, and TOO many hearts everywhere (but also not too many at all, because I make the rules!).

Turns out keeping a Garden Journal is form of art and I’m just the right artist for the job.

So, start a garden journal. Let yourself dream. Winter is the perfect time for that. Stumble into your creativity. It took me approximately 12 pages (and long stretches of time) just putting things on paper to uncover how I love to garden journal. The point? Don’t be afraid of those 12 pages!

You’re the right artist for the job.

It’s your garden journal. Your rules. See your life on the page–your God-given, blooming, bursting, blessed life and enjoy the process!