Keeping a garden record book is not a new thing: gardeners across the world note down when they sow seeds, plant bulbs, and when crops flourish or flowers bloom. Never before, though, has it been as easy to record the progress in your garden in a visual way, literally, at the touch of a button and this will be a wonderful way this year to help you monitor the progress of the outside world!

Photographing your garden regularly means you can use it as a practical record, as a photograph often serves better than memory as to where bulbs were planted, which shade a particular flower is, what height a perennial gets to, and when the onion sets peeped through.

It also serves as an aide memoire for future planning. It can be hard when you look out at brown, withered borders in the bleak mid-winter to recall the glory days of summer and to remember just how gorgeous your little patch of green was. It is all too easy come spring to start to turn over borders, even dig in new plants, only for those dormant perennials or bulbs to pop up and your hard work is ruined with the slice of a spade.

Having your phone in your pocket when in the garden means you can capture the sunlight dancing briefly on a flower; a solitary bee hopping between flower heads; the colours of the summer flowers; a lone raindrop balancing on a leaf; the unfurling of a new season.

It is also a wonderful thing to look back at your fabulous summer garden pictures and take a moment to revel in the success of what you created and shaped. It is a good thing to feel pride in how good the garden looked in that moment, on that day, in that month.

This year, attempt to photograph your garden at the beginning of each month so you can look back at the end of the year and compare the growth and beauty of the garden month on month. Why don’t you take five minutes each month and #snapyourgarden?