As an avid gardener, I love plants. As an artist and creative, I love sketchbooks, journals and notebooks. So when I friend of mine sent me an Instagram post of a plant journal being released by Tyler Thrasher, I took a look and asked myself: “Do I really want this?”
Ummm…YES.
I’ve tried a handful of garden or plant journals over the years. Most of them are ring-bound compilations with different sections of blank, graph and lined paper with some sort of plasticky cover with a picture of plants on it. I suppose those would be fine if you used them in a bullet-journaling style, where you designed your own layouts and trackers. However, I prefer a little more structure in my note-taking (and I don’t really have that much time to design layouts), so it was hard for me to get into it. But, to each their own!
I signed up for a pre-order on Tyler’s website in early July. There were three variations of the cover design— a fern, a sprig of rosemary, or a branch of leaves and blackberries. As you can see in the photos so far, I chose the fern design.
Fast-forward to mid-August, and guess what came in the mail?
HOW AMAZING DOES THIS LOOK???
My initial impression is that the journal is VERY nice quality. The linen fabric is a pale sage color, and the gold foiling adds an eye-catching gleam to the spine. If you put this journal on a shelf with a bunch of other books, it would fit right in with all of your other hardbound novels, and nobody would know that it was a plant record journal.
It also has a bit of heft to it as well. At 6.25″ x 9.25″ x 1″ (15.9cm x 23.50cm x 2.54cm) and maybe up to 2 lbs (.91 kg) in weight, it’s a good size and quite substantial. If you dropped it on your foot…it would probably hurt. But please don’t do that—you don’t want to damage your lovely journal. ; )
As you can see from the Table of Contents, there are even informational guides for fertilizing, pest control, soil components and pH info. Scattered throughout the journal are images of his intriguing succulent collection.
I love lithops. I wish I could get my hands on some of those green ones in the upper right-hand corner…
The bulk of the journal is made up of these plant record entries, as featured in the photo above. Everything is cleanly designed and printed in a soothing sage green color similar to the journal’s exterior. A centerfold in the middle of the journal expands to give you a long graph paper layout to use as a garden landscape planner.
The very last section of the journal features several pages for soil recipes (or fertilizer recipes, pest control recipes, or whatever else you can think of).
The journal’s binding is excellent, as can be seen above. Everything is clean and crisp and the book blocks (each unit of folded pages) are tightly glued to the spine. I love hardbound books like this! There’s just something much more special than ring-binding and plastic covers. Of course, keeping the linen covers clean may be an issue, but I can always make my own dustcover if I felt the need. I would also define this journal as being more of a “Field Guide to insert name here ‘s Plant Collection” because it functions more as a record book. If you’re looking for a journal to make day-to-day entries and observations, you may have to look elsewhere, or use other journal variations in conjunction with this one.
Hope you enjoyed this review and found it helpful! If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. Stay tuned for Part II, where I test the paper with different pens and markers.
Always Keep Growing,
Heather (a.k.a. The Botanical Chick)
