Spring is here! On Florida’s Gulf Coast, azaleas and gardenias are in bloom, bombax, jacaranda and golden trumpet trees are flowering, and the air smells of orange blossoms and pittosporum. We’re enjoying the efforts of gardens planned long ago. 

Personally, our garden is struggling. The walk-through we had in January with the new landscaping team didn’t materialize into the vision we had in mind. My mistake. Our former landscape team knew what we wanted and translated every meeting into exactly what was expected. Not so much with the new team. Even though I thought we had gone over every bed and every pot and that we were clear on design and plant materials, we weren’t on the same page. We’ll do our next walk through with very specific note-taking and drawings to be sure we’re communicating clearly. 

I put together a simple set of printable worksheets for this purpose. We can sketch out the design plan, make a materials list and create a record of what’s planted where and what worked. These will be a great edition to my EM planner. I hope you‘ll find them useful as well!