My Mom Passed Down a “Recipe Binder” Full of Gardening Tricks — Everyone Should Have One

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Almost every family has one: a worn box or binder filled with recipes passed down through generations, the kind you return to again and again because they’re reliable, comforting, and, best of all, foolproof.

Just like you, I have a binder too. But instead of Wacky Cake or Gran’s peanut brittle, mine holds tips for keeping spider mites away from roses or coaxing a stubborn kumquat tree into bloom. This collection of passed-down “recipes” from my mom isn’t for the kitchen — it’s for the garden.

My mom comes from a family of gardeners, although whether it began as necessity or choice is hard to say. Her grandparents were Midwestern farmers, and her own parents had little money and even less formal education — so gardening wasn’t a hobby so much as it was survival. Still, my great-grandmother loved it, and she was the one who taught my mom her practical, time-tested methods.

At first, there wasn’t a physical binder — just a shared body of knowledge passed between the women in my family, with nothing written down for decades. They were likely too busy on the farm, or they assumed the knowledge would pass naturally, with future generations staying close to the land.

Of course, that didn’t happen. The family scattered across the country, the Ohio farm was sold, and that way of life faded. But even though my mom wasn’t born on the farm, she carried those “recipes” with her when she moved to a place that couldn’t have been more different: the San Francisco Bay Area.

Despite the shift, our gardens were always enviable, with pots on the front porch overflowing with blossoms and vegetables growing just steps from the back door. Wherever she lived, my mom created something beautiful — even as the plants changed with the climate, from papaya and plumeria in Hawai’i to tomatoes and hydrangeas in Southern California to eggplant and Angelita daisies in Nevada.

The Garden Recipe Binder finally took shape about 20 years ago, when I started gardening at a rental house in California and asked my mom to write everything down — every recipe she and the women before her had been carrying in their heads for decades. The binder lives in my garage now. It’s within easy reach whenever a plant looks distressed, although I still call my mom first so she can diagnose the problem before I even open the pages.

Recently, I nearly lost both of my Eden climbing roses to spider mites — they looked less like something from a garden magazine and more like a prop from a horror film. But my mom stepped in, as she always does. Now, a month later, the roses are full, lush, and more beautiful than I’ve ever seen them.

Lots of people think to ask their family members for passed-down food recipes, but consider this your sign to start a gardening recipe binder for your family. Depending on your needs, your family members’ levels of expertise, and your personal skill set, you have some options for how to go about it.

Maybe your nana grows a stunning lavender bush, or your uncle always offers you the juiciest, most delicious tomatoes. If you have family members with major green thumbs, ask each of them to handwrite their processes for their favorite plants, from when they plant them, to how they maintain them, to what they do when something goes wrong. No detail is too small! 

Another option to try — either in addition to the above or independently — is to create your own “recipes” for future you and future family members. Perhaps you introduce a new flower to your garden for the very first time and spend the summer monitoring what does and doesn’t work. At the end of the season, write down your success plan, and stick it in your binder! Or maybe you follow expert recommendations and see serious results that you want to remember for years to come; put those in the binder, too. 

Eventually, you’ll have a full binder teeming with gardening advice that you can turn to year-round, and even make copies of as gifts for your loved ones.

If there’s one thing my own binder has taught me, it’s that the best garden solutions stand the test of time.