plant journal
A downloadable zine
Grow a plant alongside daily journaling! Each day draw an “observational” doodle of your plant and roll a dice to get Grow Points that give you data on how your plant is growing.
Use an empty page to create your garden. You can decorate the edges of the page and add some features to your garden like a bird feeder or a fountain. Just be sure you have space for the plants! Once a plant is fully grown, you can then “replant” it into the garden. The goal is to fill up your garden with many different kinds of plants!
Tip: If you already keep a journal, just add this game to your journal. You can create a garden page in your journal or somewhere else.
This game is great for a daily journal where you have a whole page to use for a plant doodle and the points score.
TOOLS
- D6
- D20 (suggested but is optional)
- Writing utensil
- Paper
- Sticky note (optional)
INSTRUCTIONS
- Create a Garden Page to which you can move your grown plants.
- Use a journal, a notebook or a sheet of paper to calculate a plant’s Grow Points every day. Don’t forget to draw your plant’s observational sketches!
Tip: You can keep track of the Grow Points on a sticky note.
- Grow Points (1d6)
1 — Dying (-1 GP)
2 — Stagnant (+0)
3 — Growing (+1 GP)
4 — Growing (+2 GP)
5-6 — Growing (+3 GP)
- Roll a 1D20 (if you don’t have one, roll a 4D6 instead) and get the Total Grow Points you must reach for a plant to be fully grown.
- Roll a 1D6 to get the base Grow Points your seed will start with.
- Roll a 1D6 each day and consult the Grow Points chart to start growing your plant. Add each day’s Grow Points together with the previous total.
- Once you reach the total points amount for the plant, you can move it into the Garden page.
If the total amount of Grow Points reaches negative one (-1), the plant dies.
ATTRIBUTES
Suggestions for how your plant can look and feel. Roll a 1D20 and choose one (1) attribute from the corresponding row. Feel free to add to this one or create your chart with attributes instead! (View them in the downloaded files.)
JOURNALING PROMPTS
My personal form of journaling is mainly a task tracker with minimal writing but this year (2023) I have also added a daily planner. Here I usually write down sentences with little remarks about things I’ve done almost reminiscent of tweets. I also have a brain dumb journal I use occasionally too.
This game may be best for a daily or weekly planner but however you journal or whatever your journaling system is, I thought it’d be good to give some prompts! (View them in the downloaded files.)
There is no real printable version beyond the PDF version as the ZINE version was created on a large sheet of paper.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
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I am sincerely so obsessed with this concept! It works on so many levels as a natural, variable interaction to have with a journal; plus the garden page as a visual representation of the year as you go? Oh man I love it so much. I have tried and failed to be a journaler in the past but I really want to give this a try 🌱
thank you!!!! honestly keeping a journal (or planner!) can look very differently for people and i always want to suggest like figuring out what can work for u! i can't remember how much i wrote a out this noe as i edited this a bunch haha but like i myself started with a thin notebook where i just kept a weekly to-do list! and then after like 3? 4? months i got a proper bullet journal and continued basically the same with a weekly to-do list but decorating it cuter with stickers and stuff! now i'm on my 3rd bullet journal and honestly the basic idea stayed the same! tho now i have a habit tracker (more like task tracker) with a space for to-do tasks but mainly i began to write what "accomplishments" i've done each day which are like what meal I made haha or video game played etc..
this year i also added a planner where at the end of the day (or through out the day) i write down like a short sentence about something happening in the day— what i did in a video game, who i sent a letter to (currently its international correspondence writing month so im trying to send a letter every weekday (im a lazy butt taking the weekend off haha), and things like that! i dont know if you have heard of hobonichi techo but thats the daily a6 planner i have! something that can be fun if you want to challenge yourself could be a 3 or 5 year journal! the kind where you write each day and for 3 or 5 years and can see what u wrote the previous years as everything is on the same age for th3 same days.. it doesnt fit into my journal system right now but its something im 👀 about..
oh the other thing is i made a vent journal where i only sometimes use it when i really need to get some emotions out. it can go weeks before i use it! and here im usually glad when i dont need it haha
sorry tgis is so long,, 😅 basically journals can be used very differently! if you cant do daily, weekly is good! and its all a challenge.. i've def had times where its been hard.. just yesterday i was so sleepy i nearly forgot to do the daily page in my planner (which also no one says u have to fill every page! or do more than put a sticker on it.. im just sort of trying to challenge myself!)
also i like to make habit/task trackers be a week or like challenge myself weekly instead of monthly because its easy to just fail but when ur tracking weekly, each week is a fresh start where u can try again! so if u fail one week, thats a lot less than a month haha its like the new year resolutions where u try a few days, u then fail and give up.. here each week is a "new year" and i can try again..
,,,,,,,im sorry im just very into journaling haha sometimes feels like the only thing keeping me going.. same with stationary and crafts (the stamped onion on the back of the zine pdf is a stamp i craved myself!! same with that sparkle bullet point) and its been so freeing to have a place where i put down things i need to remember so i dont have to keep them all in my brain.. and its a good feeling.. it grounds me... so i wish other people would also figure out what feels good for them!
so yeah,,, dont give up! just figure out what works for u!!! for myself, unless i decorate my journal with stivkers i wouldnt be able to actually use it.. because having it look cute motivates me...
uh if u are curious what my journal looks like, my journal account is https://www.instagram.com/onionboi_journal/ 😅
even if u start by just writing a sentence or 2 each day and then moving on to having longer writing entries some days, thatd be real good! its all about enjoyment, at least for me, you gotta enjoy it! otherwise.. its like whats the point?? (unless its a vent journal.. obviously the point is to vent haha)
so um yeah,,,, haha i hope i didnt scare you off, journaling is wonderful!! however it looks and works for an individual 😊
So much of this is honestly life-changing? Like, I've been told before that I don't have to fill every day, but I find myself skipping too many days in the row and then I feel guilty or whatever... but when you said just now "no one said you have to[...]do more than put a sticker on it" I was like "...you can do that?????" You can just put a sticker? like of course it's my journal no one tells me what to do but is that really ALLOWED? I love that. I mean I love stickers but also I sincerely needed someone to just pick me up and shake me and say A JOURNAL ENTRY IS WHATEVER YOU SAY IT IS. Also all your advice on different ways to use a journal is just really well-informed and helped me to sort of contextualize the way I have tried using journals in the past and what I really want to get out of them.
You did not scare me off and it was all such a sincerely good and individualized pitch for journals! Thank you for taking the time to write all this out! (also I peeked at your journal insta and it's so beautiful ;_;) I am gonna give it a try and grow some plants while I do it!
😭 thank you!!! im so glad to help!!!
and yesss!!!! YESSS!!! i live to just try to open people's preconcieved notions for journaling/planners! im still not perfect myself and get caught up in stuff but i am really thankful that i started my own way of journaling without having any real reference of journal spreads other people do— i only began getting inspiration from other people's journaling posts/videos about a year into journaling when i had a pretty solid spread template i was using. of course i still experiment and its been changing and evolving but thats whats great about it! because you get to modify to make it work for you— sometimes im a little sad when i see a spread i really like that someone made because I realize i cant use it haha but the most important for me is the ability to actually use a spread so yeah
(also about just putting a sticker, tbf so far i still have been writing sentences but it can really help to have stickers that can correspond to something— like i got a sticker sheet of some cute cats doing chores like dishes and laundry and its nice to put down a laundry sticker on a day i did laundry :P ....i have been thinking about carving a stamp or two to symbolize like a bad day or some other specific thing just for when i dont have a sticker for it mm)
i think something that helped me was seeing some videos (mainly one from jetpens) about using old planners that are out of date— much of it is like a sketchbook so drawing your meals, or doing pen swatches, or doing washi tape swatches, etc and that sort of opened my eyes more on that you really dont have to use things convensionally.. i was reading hobonichi techo articles and some people just use their dated hobonichi planners as basically notebooks not caring about the dates! seems bonkers to me but also im almost jealous haha i wish i could do that xD
also thank you!!! 🥺 i get a lot of satisfaction out of making my journal spreads and trying to make them look nice that im always glad when others like them too! (,,,to tell the truth, i still dont have my next week's spread done so im going to have to do it tomorrow... i try to do it on thursday or friday but yeah sometimes im very tired.. so as you can see even im still struggling with journaling some days, but i kno i will enjoy making the spread once i do sit down and finally do it 😤💕)
anyway 💪💪💪💪💪 cheering you on!!!! hell yeah, go have fun doing some journaling, whatever that will look for you!!! 🥰
Omg this game is SO CUTE, i'm simply in love! I didn't get to read everything but just taking a look I loved it so much! Great idea!
Love your handwritting btw! keep up the great work! <3
thank you!!!!!!!!! i had this idea months ago and looked around but didnt find any games like this on itch so had to cobble my own together haha <3 also thank you! i tried so hard to keep my writing legible as i have a habit of going into terrible looking cursive when I get tired xD
That’s such a cool idea! I love it.
thank you!!!!! i've got to admit its probably partially inspired by the nintendo 3ds flower mini game where you tried to generate as much different seeds as you could to breed different flowers to fill out a catalogue.. not that it was in my mind but i was obsessed with that game years ago haha