Garden Weather and Rain Gauge Record
Know your own plot's weather, from its rain and its frosts to its last cold night of spring. A few years of these sheets tell you more about when to sow and plant out than any regional average.
GG-25 2 pages
Garden and growing · GG-26
Garden Phenology Record
A free printable phenology record: the same seasonal firsts, from first leaf and flower to first swallow, dated each year with five years side by side.
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2 pages. Choose your paper size — both versions are laid out identically, so neither one gets shrunk to fit.
Print it and write on it
Fill it in type and save
The fillable versions have real form fields — open them in any PDF reader, type into them and save. Printing help.
What this sheet is for
See whether spring is coming earlier in your own garden by dating the same firsts every year. Five years of dates side by side show shifts in timing that no single year can.
Who it is for
Gardeners, nature recorders, schools and anyone who notices the first frogspawn or the first swallow every year.
How to use it
- List the events you can watch every year: a named tree's first leaf, a plant's first flower, the first ripe fruit, leaf fall, a first sighting.
- Name the exact plant and where it grows, so the same one is watched every year.
- Write the year at the head of a column and the date in it when you first see each event.
- Leave a box blank if you missed it, rather than guessing.
- On page two, note the weather that shaped each year.
What is on the sheet
2 pages, in this order:
Page 1
Printed under the title: The same seasonal firsts watched for every year in the same places: first leaf, first flower, first ripe fruit, leaf fall, the first swallow or butterfly, with five years of dates side by side.
Same plant, same place, every year. Choose events you can watch every year from the same spot, and name the exact plant, not only the species: the oak by the gate, the Bramley by the shed. Write the date you first saw it happen; if you were away and found it already done, leave the box blank or add a query, so a guess never sits beside a real date.
Write-on lines: Garden or place watched · Recorded by · First year
Seasonal firsts — one line per event; write the year at the head of each column
Table, 29 rows: Plant or animal · Event · Where seen · 20__ · 20__ · 20__ · 20__ · 20__ · Earliest · Latest
Page 2
The weather that shaped each year — a few words a season, enough to explain an early or late year
Table, 6 rows: Year · Winter · Spring · Summer · Autumn
Questions
What is phenology?
The timing of things that happen every year in nature: leaves opening, flowers coming out, fruit ripening, birds arriving. Recording the same events in the same place over many years shows how the seasons are shifting.
Why the same plant every year, not the species?
Because two trees of the same kind can leaf weeks apart depending on where they stand. Watching one named plant means a change in its date is a change in the year, not a change in the tree.
Can I send my records anywhere?
Some national schemes collect seasonal records from the public, such as Nature's Calendar in the UK. Check what is run where you live, and record events the way that scheme asks if you want to take part.
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