The Gardener's Five Year Journal

Beryl Hamilton is a freelance writer in Thunder Bay who specializes in
home gardening.

This “journal” will take a gardener through five years of planning
and cultivating a garden. The introduction is followed by six sections:
“Planning the Garden,” “Planting,” “Plant Care,” “Plant
Inventory,” “Potpourri,” and “Final Thoughts.” Pages for notes
are included for gardeners to keep track of planning, planting, and
plant care, which allows for convenient reviewing of past mistakes,
accomplishments, and rewards. Also included is a five-page section (one
page per year) for children to keep their own records. Personal stories
about the author’s family’s gardening experiences and traditions
round out the book.

The journal is beautifully designed. The soft-matte paper is a pleasure
to handle, and the elegant reproduction prints are accompanied by
amusing quotations (e.g., “What a man needs in gardening is a cast
iron back with a hinge in it.”—Charles Dudley Warons). The
Gardener’s Five Year Journal is much more than a fact-recording book;
along with its practicality, it provides the owner with a visually
attractive storehouse for gardening memories.