During the first year of planting, I decided I would like to keep a record of everything we bought. I had never done anything like this before, so it took a while to decide how it should be done, but in the end I decided to use Microsoft Office Access. With this programme it is possible to make columns and insert data which can then be referenced according to each column.
The columns I decided on were:
Acquired/Planted: when, where from; how much paid came in later
Latin Name
Common English Name
Type: tree, shrub, perennial, etc
Site: where planted
Season: when it flowered
Description: what it looked like, colour, etc
Flowered: if it actually flowered
Current Status/Action: whether it had survived, needed moving or removing
This programme enables me to list the plants in alphabetical order by 'name', but I can also show them in 'site' order or 'type' if I want to.
It is quite a time-consuming process to maintain a list like this and inevitably some new plants get missed off and others appear in the garden as if from nowhere. I try to write down and photograph all the new ones we buy and then have a session entering them into the database at a later date. Then they often get planted before I know where, which can be a bit frustrating, but on the whole I find it quite a good system for keeping track of what we should have where.
I feel sure many people would think I was crazy doing this, and I do myself sometimes, but as we were starting from scratch, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
My list at 31 July 2005 had 352 plants on it, including trees, conifers, shrubs, perennials, bulbs, succulents, climbers, ramblers, alpines, herbs and grasses. Some of these we had brought from our previous garden, some had been rescued from before we started work on the new one, some had been given to us and others had been bought.
Before I could 'site' the plants, it was necessary to divide the garden into sections and so, going anti-clockwise around the edges from the archway, there was the rockery, next to rockery, right-hand border, top border, next to the water feature and water feature, leaving the centre bed undivided. The latter was quite a large area, but these were early days and it wasn't until the following year that it was divided into A, B, C, D and E (see below).
As this was to be a cottage-style garden, we intended that most of the plants would be perennials and, as it was on limestone, we knew acid-loving plants were unlikely to do well in it. Further, we didn't want any lawned areas and we also needed to cover the fences, particularly those on the pub side, where its fans belched out noise, fumes and smells. The fire escape, too, could be a nuisance as, being in a poor area for mobile phone signals, staff from the pub would overlook our garden as they made use of its height to make calls.
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