For Sam 📸
Your garden photo project + week-by-week guide for capturing how it grows.
The big idea
Phone photos, same angle each week, watching the garden change.
📸 Photo shot list for the build weekend
- Wide shot of the empty raised bed (current state with the hugelkultur filler visible)
- The sproutling team on the kitchen counter — "before"
- The jumbo jalapeño plant in its current pot
- Photo of the late-day-shade yard area showing where the bed sits
- Photo of the all-day-shade yard area (for fall garden reference later)
- Soil bags lined up before filling
- Hands filling the box (yours or Taylor's)
- Cattle panel + T-post trellis going up
- PVC shade frame partial build (even if not deployed yet)
- Plants laid out in placement before going in ground (the "layout reveal" shot)
- Each plant getting placed — close-up + wide
- Mulch going on
- Soaker hose visible before mulch covers it
- Final "garden complete" wide shot
- Blackberry barrel close-up
- Day 1 watering
- Day 3 health-check (each plant close-up)
- Day 7 first-week update (wide + any growth)
- Rowan with "her plant" (bonus shot)
📅 The weekly rhythm
Every Sunday morning (before 10 AM), take a wide shot of the whole garden from the same angle. Same spot, same direction. This is your time-lapse over the season. Even if nothing looks different week-to-week, when you scroll back in October you'll be amazed.
Tip: Pick a landmark to align with (corner of the house, a fence post) so it's easy to find the same spot each week.
In addition to the weekly wide shot, capture these one-time moments:
- First flower (whichever plant flowers first)
- First fruit set — tiny green tomato cluster, first jalapeño forming
- First ripe harvest — "the first basket" photo
- Shade cloth going up (mid-June when heat arrives)
- Heat-pause / mid-summer state (mid-July) — what survival looks like
- Fall flush — renewed fruit set in September
- First blackberry ripe
- Pre-freeze final October/November photo
- Year-end "what we grew" composite
🌅 Heat-safety reminder
From late May through August, plan photo sessions before 10 AM or after 7 PM. Beyond the heat-safety angle (for you and Rowan), morning light is also more flattering — softer shadows, warmer colors. Late-day "golden hour" works too if you're feeling ambitious.
Midday Pflugerville sun in July washes everything out anyway.
📂 Suggested folder structure
Whatever phone-photo organization you prefer — but a simple system that works well:
Garden 2026 / May / build_day_1Garden 2026 / May / build_day_2Garden 2026 / May / week_1_recapGarden 2026 / June / week_2- ...
Garden 2026 / Milestones / first_flowerGarden 2026 / Milestones / first_ripe_tomato
Or just dump everything in one folder with consistent filenames. Whatever works.
📷 Phone tips for plant photos
- Hold steady: tap the phone screen to set focus on a leaf or flower before shooting
- Get close: phones do macro surprisingly well; physically move close rather than zooming
- Different angles: straight-down shots show layout; eye-level shots show plant character; underneath-looking-up shots are dramatic for tomato vines on the trellis
- Include context: a Rowan-sized hand near a fruit gives a nice scale reference
- Light: morning light + late-afternoon light always beat midday
💚 What this becomes
By November, you'll have a season of photos that tell the story of the garden — the build, the explosion of spring growth, the summer survival mode, the surprising fall comeback. That's the kind of thing that becomes a small slideshow for Rowan to flip through, a memory to look at when planning year 2, or just a satisfying record of "we did this."
The garden's the project. The photos are the album.