Diaries are good places for passions of the heart, which is why biologist Lisa Greene chose a diary to unleash her passion for plants and flowers.

This week Mrs. Greene released her first book ‘Bermuda’s Flora - Engagement Diary 2008’. It is full of colour photographs, information about Bermuda’s plants and flowers, and excerpts from her long-time newspaper column, ‘Gardener’s World’.

“The idea is you can use the book as a diary, and at the end of the year you can take all the diary pages out and you are left with all the photographs, and the text in the back,” said Mrs. Greene.

“My overriding goal is that I get it into people’s homes. I want people to know and care about the plants that we have in Bermuda. That is really what I wanted to do with this.”

The diary was purely a labour of love for Mrs. Greene. She did everything herself from layout to photography with the exception of the printing.

“It is something that has been in my mind for a number of years, and I mean quite a few years,” she said. “I wanted to put something out on Bermuda’s plants. My weekly column in the newspaper was building up to this. I had a concept and I had to figure out how I could work it so it would be a collectable product instead of just a calendar. I finally settled on this format and just kept working on the newspaper articles, and then decided, I’d done as much of that as possible.”

Mrs. Greene wrote ‘Gardener’s World’ for the Mid-Ocean News for nearly seven years with topics ranging from the nature of Jumbie Beans to floppers, Bermuda’s good luck leaf to shell flowers, among many others.

“What got difficult was finding things that I thought the public would see and have an interest in,” she said. “Also, with a newspaper article although it was just 300 words, you need to have some sort of a story that you can tie the article to. I was running out of that. There were still plants out there that I could write about, but it was getting harder and harder to find the stories to go with them.”

She said people would often stop her in the street to tell her they had read her column or to ask her about a particular plant in their garden.

“That was nice and it told me that people do like to know more about the plants around them,” she said. “When I was developing the idea for the book, it was encouraging to realise there would be a lot of people out there who would enjoy this and use it.”

She decided to create a diary rather than a hardback picture book, because she thought it would be more affordable for people to buy.

“It will be priced at $19.95,” she said. “To me that sounds really appealing as a gift, or a Christmas or birthday present. It is something a lot of people would enjoy having. So over the years they enjoy having photographs of Bermuda plants.”

The book contains a range of plants, from endemic to invasive, to ornamental to weeds, and is meant to be the first volume of a series.

“If it is successful then I will publish a second and third volume,” she said. “I really wanted to have a variety of plants in there. I didn’t want to do it on a theme. I think it would be limiting and boring. So I have tried to have a little bit of everything, but overall I have tried to make each page as pretty as I can so that they are pleasant to look at. So when people pick it up and flip through people think, oh that is nice, I would like to have that on my desk.

“There are some unusual plants in there,” said Mrs. Greene. “For example, I have included Lignum-Vitae which is kind of unusual. It is a very hard wood, if it is not the hardest wood. It is also self-lubricating and was used to make things like pulleys and propeller shafts in ships because of its lubrication properties. I think it might have also been used to cure syphilis.”

One arresting picture in the diary is of a flame tree, an introduced species.

“You can see one at the Botanical Gardens in the garden near the Hospital,” she said. “I am hoping that after seeing these plants in the diary, people will appreciate them more when they see them in passing.”

Mrs. Greene has a degree in biology, and got her start with plants through the Department of Agriculture & Fisheries.

“When I finished university, I started with what was then the Department of Fisheries,” she said. “Then I was looking for a change. I left and went to work at Trimingham’s for awhile. I’d worked there as a college student. I ended up working in the jewellery workshop and on the floor doing sales. I thought this is really not what I want to do with my life.”

She eventually got a job as technical assistant to the curator of the Botanical Gardens.

“Government has these wonderful titles,” said Mrs. Greene. “I learnt what I knew on the job there. I was there for nine years and really enjoyed it, but after nine years it was time for a change.”

She left the Botanical Gardens and went to work for the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum & Zoo in the Natural History Museum. She has been there now for 14 years.

“On a day to day basis I do anything to do with Natural History,” she said. “But plants are my love, and I love communicating that to people. I have been active in the Botanical Society ever since it started.”

Unfortunately, because she lives on a small piece of property next to the North Shore, she doesn’t have a big garden.

“Where I live, it is very challenging to get things to grow,” she said. “It is a shame, so I indulge my love of plants through photographs.”