The 6 Best Garden Journal Apps of 2027
The short version: The best garden journal app depends on how you like to keep records. Percy, the garden journal that remembers, is my pick overall. It keeps everything a good garden journal should (what you planted, what you did, what you harvested) and puts that history to work in its advice. It also holds onto the parts most journals have nowhere to put, like the first tomato of the summer or the hummingbird at the zinnias. You just talk to it or share a photo, and it does the remembering, so you can enjoy your garden. Gardenize is best for gardeners who like building a structured garden diary by hand. GrowVeg and Seedtime are strongest if you want your journal tied directly to a garden plan and layout tool. GrowNotes is a simple plant-by-plant log, and Day One is the best general journaling app if you want to build your own garden diary.
Quick disclosure: I make Percy, so I'm not the most objective source. That said, I like these other apps too, still use some of them, and have tried to be honest and fair in where they all excel.
Every garden journal starts the same way. A clean slate. Good intentions. A plan to write down and remember everything.
Then June happens.
Suddenly your well-laid plans meet the firehose of reality. And before long, it's October and you've got a few random notes about your garden jotted between grocery lists and reminders to call the plumber.
But garden journals are worth keeping. A good journal turns one season's surprises into next season's head start. (If you want the longer argument, and what's actually worth writing down, I wrote a whole guide to keeping a garden journal you'll actually stick with.)
Growing as a gardener is mostly trial and error (or in my case, trial and error and error and error…). And the more you can remember, the better off you'll be for next season. Especially if you remembered to call the plumber.
The hard part has never been knowing a garden journal is useful. It's keeping one while you're also, you know, gardening.
So that's what I judged these apps on: how quickly you can get a note down with dirt on your hands, whether the record organizes itself or you organize it, whether you can find things again next year, and whether the journal helps you garden better or just holds your notes.
I chose these six because they represent the main ways gardeners actually keep a digital record: conversational journaling, structured plant databases, planner-linked journals, simple plant logs, and general-purpose journaling.
For the full field, covering planners, plant ID and more, see the best gardening apps of 2027.
Last checked: October 4, 2026. Apps and prices change quickly, so if something here is out of date, let me know.
The best garden journal apps, at a glance
| If you want… | Best garden journal app |
|---|---|
| A journal you can just talk to that remembers all of it, the work and the good parts | Percy |
| An organized list of your plants and garden areas | Gardenize |
| A journal tied to your vegetable garden plan | GrowVeg |
| Notes linked to the plantings on your calendar | Seedtime |
| A simple log, plant by plant | GrowNotes |
| To build your own garden journal | Day One |
1. Percy: the best garden journal app overall
Percy is the garden journal that remembers. You don't have to fill out forms or work through fields. You just hold a button and say what's going on in the garden, the way you'd tell a friend: "I planted the garlic along the back fence. Hardneck, the one from the farmer's market." Or you type it. Percy works out the plant, what you did and the date, records the weather at that moment, and shows you the note to check before you save it. Ten seconds, and you're back to gardening.
So you can say what's going on out there with one hand full of cucumbers, then focus on being present in the garden.
Percy handles everything you'd expect a great garden tool to capture: what you planted, what you harvested, what went wrong, what you're planning next. It just does it from a sentence instead of a form. And it remembers all of it, across seasons, in a way no notebook or spreadsheet ever could.
And because it remembers, you can ask. "When did I plant the cucumbers?" "Which tomatoes did I say were worth growing again?" Three weeks into your first season, you'll ask something you've already forgotten, and Percy will know.
When you say "remind me to check the brassicas for cabbage worms next week," it keeps that in Twigs, Percy's list of things you mean to do, and shows you a card in the app when it's time. A gentle nudge on the main screen. It doesn't nag you about it.
Most garden journals stop there, at a good record of the work. Percy keeps a very good one. But the work was never the reason any of us got into this, so Percy is built to hold onto the rest of the garden too.
The garden advisor that knows your garden
Ask a question you'd normally ask the internet and get an answer based on your garden, not a stranger's. Percy knows your zone, your microclimate, and everything you've grown and shared.
Percy is like having an advisor who just happens to know a lot about your garden. Show it a photo and ask what this is, or what's wrong with this leaf, and the answer isn't just a name: "That's powdery mildew. You had it on the squash last year and the milk spray worked after two applications." Ask when to plant tomatoes, and it answers for your frost dates (in the US, from historical data at nearby NOAA weather stations).
Percy also comes to you. It gives you a heads-up in the app when frost or a heat wave is on the way. And every couple of weeks, it sends a Garden Letter, a short email that brings back what you've noted lately and flags what's coming where you live, like the first frost or a dry spell, and what it means for the plants you're growing.
Percy keeps the things that have never had a place to go
Some of the best parts of keeping a garden don't fit neatly into a plant tracking category. The day your kids found the best worm EVER. Or the hummingbird that stopped for a closer look to watch you do some weeding. Or the garden party you threw for the neighbors that was a thinly veiled attempt to unload your glut of squash.
The moments that matter most in the garden are the ones that tend to disappear from memory first. Percy saves those memories right alongside the plantings, the actions and the to-do lists.
It helps you notice more, too. Percy knows whether a plant is native or invasive where you garden (when reliable regional information exists), and it remembers. So over a season, your journal becomes a record of what your yard is doing for the wildlife around it, not just what you grew.
A garden diary that writes itself
Once you've shared a note, Percy organizes it all for you in The Nest. Every note you share is organized, either as a general note about the garden, or by plant. Tap on any plant in your Nest, and you get its own little book: when it went in, what you noticed, and all of the photos you've taken of it, in order. It's like a coffee table book about your garden that writes a new page every time you share a note. It feels less like maintaining a database and more like watching a book about your garden write itself over the season.
At the end of the season, your notes become a Migration Report, a look back at your garden's year: the complete story of your season, and a keepsake of the whole thing. The first ones arrive in January 2027.
Gardens are beautiful. I built Percy so the record of yours would feel that way too.
One thing to know: Percy isn't a bed-layout planner. If you want to draw your beds, pair it with GrowVeg or Seedtime below. Percy works in any browser on Android, desktop, or iPhone, with a native iPhone app on the App Store, and your first full growing season is free (then $39 a year). If you want ideas for what to say to it, here are 10 things worth tracking in a garden journal.
2. Gardenize: the best diary for organizing your plants by garden areas
If Percy is the friend you tell things to, Gardenize is the carefully organized binder. It's been around a long time, it's well loved, and it's often the first name that comes up when people search for a garden journal app.
Gardenize is built around your garden's structure. You set up your garden areas, indoors and out, as many as you like, and build a library of your plants, drawing on a database of more than 45,000 of them. Then you log what you do as diary entries, with photos, and connect each one to the plants and areas it's about. You can even create your own reusable activity types, so "deadheaded" or "added compost" becomes one tap.
My favorite detail: you can draw on your photos, to mark where you planted the bulbs or which branch to prune. That's a small, smart idea that anyone who has ever lost track of where the tulips went will appreciate. It also has single and recurring reminders, and you can export your data to a spreadsheet.
Gardenize is free to start, with a Gardenize Plus subscription for more, and it's on both iPhone and Android.
Where Gardenize shines: if building an organized record of your plants, photos and garden areas is part of the fun for you, Gardenize gives you a lot of control. The difference is mostly about how you prefer to journal: Gardenize gives you a well-organized record you can browse. Percy does the record-keeping for you, so the garden stays the fun part, then turns your record into knowledge: connections across seasons, advice drawn from your garden's own history, and a season you can look back on as a keepsake. (I compared the two in more detail here.)
3. GrowVeg Garden Journal: the best journal for planning next year's vegetable garden
If you plan your vegetable garden in GrowVeg, its Garden Journal is the natural place to keep your notes, because the two are designed to talk to each other.
You can record when you planted, watered, weeded, mulched, or harvested, add photos and notes from your phone or tablet, and even log how much you harvested of each variety. The journal turns all of that into reports on your progress and reminds you what's coming up. GrowVeg also shows each day's weather right alongside your journal entries. When you plan the next season, GrowVeg carries your journal information and harvest records back into the planner so you can see what happened before.
GrowVeg describes the Journal as free to use. And as I said in my beginners' list, the GrowVeg YouTube channel is one of the best gardening teachers out there, so you can learn tips on how to take care of your garden, then keep the notes in your journal on what worked best.
4. Seedtime: the best journal for gardeners who want notes tied directly to their planting plan
Seedtime is a garden planner first, and one of the best you'll find. It also has a Journal, included with a free account, with unlimited entries.
Seedtime's journal is especially useful because you can connect it to your garden plans. You can link an entry to a specific planting on your calendar, add pictures, tag your notes, and then sort, search, or filter later. Seedtime tracks the weather too. So if you want to know how a particular variety did across a season, the notes are attached to the very planting you scheduled.
Where Seedtime shines: if your season lives in Seedtime's calendar, keeping your notes right next to the plan makes a lot of sense. Where Percy fits: the two pair well. Seedtime plans the season; Percy remembers how it actually went.
5. GrowNotes: the simplest plant-by-plant garden log
GrowNotes is a small, focused iPhone app that does one thing well: it keeps a log for each of your plants.
You add your plants (and group them, if you like), then log entries for each one, sorted into care categories you can customize, with a photo attached. A timeline shows your entries across all of your plants, and you can export everything as a CSV. It's free to start, with a Pro upgrade that adds tasks and reminders, among other things. Its appeal is that there isn't much system to learn: pick the plant, add the note, attach a photo, and move on.
If you want a no-frills plant diary on your phone, and you're happy to do the categorizing yourself, GrowNotes is a tidy little tool.
6. Day One: Best general journaling app for a DIY garden diary
Some people don't want a gardening app at all. They want a general-purpose journal that happens to be full of their garden. For them, I'd suggest Day One.
It isn't built for gardening, but it's one of the best-known journaling apps there is. You can add photos, video, and audio to entries, keep a separate journal just for the garden, use tags for plants or beds, and its "On This Day" feature resurfaces what you wrote on the same date in past years, which is a surprisingly good fit for a garden. Day One is available across iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and web, with a free tier and a paid upgrade.
The trade-off is that you're the organizer: connecting notes about the same plant, or looking up your frost dates, is up to you. But if you love writing, it's a pleasure to use.
(And if your heart belongs to paper, I understand completely. I just wrote a whole confession about it.)
What kind of garden journal app do you need?
There are five main kinds of garden journal apps: structured databases like Gardenize, journals attached to planning systems like GrowVeg and Seedtime, quick-capture journals like Percy, simple plant logs like GrowNotes, and general journaling apps like Day One. The best choice depends less on how many features an app has than on the kind of record-keeping you'll still be doing once the garden gets busy.
Which should you choose?
A garden journal only works if it fits the way you already garden. A few honest pairings:
- You want the record without the record-keeping: Percy. Say what happened, and it remembers all of it, the good parts included.
- You love structure: Gardenize, for a carefully organized library of your plants and garden areas.
- You plan a vegetable garden: keep your journal where your plan is (GrowVeg or Seedtime), and add Percy for everything that happens once you start planting: the questions, the problems, and how it all actually went.
- You want something simple: GrowNotes for a per-plant log on your phone.
- You love to write: Day One, or a good notebook.
If you want one app that does the least to interrupt the gardening itself, Percy is the one I'd start with. It's designed around the assumption that the best journal is the one you can keep without feeling like you're keeping a journal.
| Best for | App | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Remembering the work and the good parts, without the record-keeping | Percy | Talk or type; Percy organizes it |
| Structured garden diary | Gardenize | Plants + areas + diary entries |
| Journal tied to vegetable planning | GrowVeg | Journal integrated with planner |
| Notes tied to planting calendar | Seedtime | Entries linked to scheduled plantings |
| Simple plant log | GrowNotes | Per-plant entries and timeline |
| DIY garden journal | Day One | General journal with tags/media |
Frequently asked questions
What is the best garden journal app? For most gardeners, Percy, because you just talk to it and it organizes your notes, photos, and the weather for you, then remembers it all across seasons and puts that history to work in its advice. If you'd rather build a structured diary organized around plants and garden areas, Gardenize is an excellent choice. If you want it connected to your garden planner, compare GrowVeg and Seedtime.
Is there a free garden journal app? Yes. Seedtime's Journal is included with a free account, GrowVeg describes its Garden Journal as free to use, and Gardenize and GrowNotes are free to start. Percy is free for your first full growing season.
What should I record in a garden journal? What you planted and when, what you noticed (pests, blooms, problems, surprises), what you harvested, the weather, and what you'd do differently. Here are 10 ideas for what to track.
Is a garden journal app better than a paper journal? It depends on whether you'll keep it up. Paper can be a pleasure to use and works beautifully for people who enjoy writing by hand. Apps are easier to search, can keep photos with entries, and can make it simpler to retrieve information from past seasons.
Can a garden journal app record the weather automatically? Yes. Percy records the weather on every note automatically, so next year you can see what conditions were like when something happened. GrowVeg shows each day's weather alongside your journal entries, and Seedtime shows past and forecast weather on its planting calendar.
Is there a garden journal app that knows which plants are native? Percy does. When you mention or photograph a plant, it tells you whether it's native or invasive where you garden (when reliable regional information exists) and keeps that in your garden's record. Most of the other apps here are built for recording, not ecology.
What's the difference between a garden journal app and a garden planner app? A planner helps you decide what to grow, where, and when, before the season starts. A journal records what actually happened. They pair well: Seedtime or GrowVeg for the plan, and Percy for the story.
How do I keep a garden journal I'll actually stick with? Make it as easy as possible to add a note in the moment, while you're still in the garden. That's the whole idea behind Percy. For more, here's how to keep a garden journal you'll actually stick with.
What is the difference between a garden journal and a garden diary? In practice, very little. "Garden journal" and "garden diary" are usually used interchangeably for a record of what you planted, when things happened, problems, harvests, weather, photos and observations across the season.
What is a garden log app? A garden log app is another name for a garden journal app: a place to record plantings, blooms, harvests, pests, weather, photos and other observations over time. Some apps use structured plant records; others let you keep free-form notes or speak observations as they happen.
What is the best garden diary app for iPhone? Percy is a strong choice if you want to capture notes conversationally and retrieve them later by asking questions. Gardenize is a better fit if you prefer a structured diary with dedicated plant and area records. GrowNotes is a simpler iPhone option for plant-by-plant logging.
What is the best garden journal app for Android? Percy works in a browser on Android (its native Android app is in review on Google Play), while Gardenize has a native Android app. I only found GrowNotes on the App Store. The best choice depends on whether you prefer conversational journaling or a structured plant-and-area diary.