Keeping Track of Bloom Times In the Garden Using Excel

From In the Garden

It's is not that I'm compulsive about keeping track of my plants and blooms or anything like that-really. I just like to know what I have to look forward to and I find it interesting to check and see just when plants bloom from year to year. I thought you all might like to see the changes from year to year as well.

I use Excel to keep track of all my plants, bloom times, rainfall, and significant events in the garden (like when I spot the first tick-March 7, 2011-yuck). Excel is simple to use and I can organize it however I like. A good thing since I can be fickle with keeping records. When I first began keeping track of my garden in my "garden catalog" I logged all plants onto one spreadsheet. That spreadsheet got to be out of control so I have now placed the plants into categories like "Shrubs and Trees" or "Bulbs, corms, irises, daylilies". I am still refining my method but I feel pretty confident I have a good handle on all plants in the garden and that is a big relief when researching and planning my garden. One easy spreadsheet that I've had no problem organizing is the bloom time spreadsheet and I show it to you above. 


I began blogging in September 2007 and because of this blog I thought it would be cool to keep track of bloom times not only for my personal use but I thought local folks could use the information when planning their gardens. A side benefit is figuring out just how far off bloom times can be from year to year. Let me first say this, I log a plant as bloomed whenever I see one bloom-the very first bloom. I used to keep track of peak bloom and when a plant was out of bloom but it got to be too subjective so now I simply log the first bloom. I log it the same way every year so you can be sure all of these bloom times are done accurately. Can you see there are ranges from one week to up to four weeks from year to year ? Wow! Some of the changes can be accounted for by the weather the previous year, current year weather, and also whether or not a plant is newly planted or not. Sometimes I try to figure out why plants have lag times or bloom earlier but what I really use this spreadsheet for is to look forward to what should be blooming next! Based on last year's bloom times I can expect the Christmas rose (Helleborus niger) to bloom next followed by 'Trevi Fountain' pulmonaria and so on. It's looking good for the pulmonaria to bloom but the Christmas rose is no where close to blooming. Oh well. I just get a kick out of expecting a certain plant to bloom and knowing what is coming next and also what has happened in prior years....


in the garden....

Words and Photos Property of In the Garden Blog Team, In the Garden