The Site Story Kit

Welcome to the winter studio, correspondent. Your garden's story starts with you — and this kit makes the telling easy. Most gardeners finish it in a weekend, and nearly all of them tell me it changed how they see their own yard. Send everything back through your commission email thread, and I'll take it from there.

1. Measure your beds

Sketch each planting area on paper — graph paper if you have it, one square to one foot, the way I draft. Note the length and depth at the widest and narrowest points, mark north with an arrow, and name each area whatever you actually call it (“the porch bed,” “the strip by the mailbox”). Rough is fine; honest is everything.

2. Map your sun

Pick one clear day and photograph each area four times — around 9, noon, 3, and 6. Stand in the same spot each time. This little diary of light tells me more than any description could: where the shade pools, where the afternoon scorches, where the evening gold lands.

3. Tell me about your soil

Two easy observations. First, the squeeze: a handful of moist soil pressed in your fist — does it ribbon like clay, crumble like cake, or fall apart like sand? Second, the jar test, if you're feeling scientific: a cup of soil in a quart jar of water, shaken hard, settled overnight — photograph the layers. And tell me what already thrives there without your help; the volunteers know your soil better than any test.

4. Inventory what's growing

List the plants already in or near the area — names if you know them, photos if you don't. Mark the ones you love and want kept, the ones you're indifferent to, and the ones you've been meaning to evict. This is your garden; nothing you love gets designed away.

5. The photo checklist

• Each area from straight on, and from the window or seat where you'll see it most
• The wider context — house wall, fence, path, whatever the garden lives against
• Anything that matters overhead or underground: downspouts, known utilities, overhanging trees
• Your inspiration — any screenshot or magazine tear that makes your heart lurch

Sending it back

Reply to your commission email with the measurements, the photos, and your notes — attachments, a shared album, a scan of a graph-paper sketch, whatever suits you. Within two weeks keeps your plan inside the growers' spring ordering window. Then the drafting table takes over, and the lovely part begins.

[ASSET: printable Site Story Kit PDF — designed later from this page's copy]