Planting counts · 2 July 2026
Why a seedling count needed the tide calendar beside it
A funder packet that lists seedlings planted, and never the tides that covered them, invites a celebration the mud may not share.
The count and the water
Groups planting mangroves within reach of Bangkok trips often count seedlings on the day they go into the mud. That count is real. It is also incomplete if a high tide the same week lays a share of them flat. A packet that prints only the planting-day total tells the funder the most generous hour.
When the group already keeps a tide note or a return visit, the studio draws the planting-day count and the later count on one spread. If no one went back, the page says the later count was not made. Hope is not filled in.
What a packet can promise
Funder packets like round numbers. The studio would rather print 1,840 if that is the tally, and say who counted. Rounding to a slogan number is a different document, and the studio declines to make it look like a count.
The tide calendar, even a simple one the group copied from a harbour note, sits in the margin of the same page. A reader can see whether the planting week was a kind week for young roots. That is the whole service of the drawing: two records, already kept, placed where a hurried reader cannot miss either.
The families of counts behind notes like this are gathered in the indicator atlas.