As we started planning for our public garden, one piece of advice that kept on popping up in the comment section of our videos was “Sindy, don’t overcomplicate this, just get planting” now that I’m in the landscaping phase of our public garden. I can see why folks said this.

Indeed, as a novice gardener, I am riddled with insecurities when it comes to garden landscaping. And because we have such a huge space to plan. It’s really easy to overthink stuff I’m realising. The more I learn about flower farming, the more I realise that I know nothing! Yet, as I’m making a “John Snow” out of myself I’m realising that the more I try to plan the more awake at night I lay overthinking stuff.

So I try to simplify things! And the easiest way to do this is to draft our requirements. This is always how we’ve done things when tackling a new project when we worked in the online gaming industry. Thus, requirement drafting is something I’m used to. Call it professional deformation or not Setting up my own expectation helps me to evaluate success and where I need to keep on learning.

Our requirements for the public garden

• Must be easy to maintain (with weed & watering).
• The flowers we pick must naturalise well in the region – because we have a huge space to cover.
• The flowers we’ll plant need to carry out beautiful sent.
• They must be pollinator-friendly.
• Non-toxic to pets.
• They must blend well with the flowers we have recently planted (Arium lily & Hydrangea mostly)
• We must have a point of interest on all terraces in peak tourist season June, July & August

Our context 

• We are in zone 8
• The terraces are South East facing.
• Part of the terraces gets excess water in the winter.
• Part of the terraces gets little to no water.
• We expect that once the trees are full of leaves, some areas will offer partial shade.

A Welcome hand – Our newest partners Bulbi.nl & Bulbi.co.uk

By now, some of you might know that we’ve been looking for a sponsor for our public garden. In the past weeks, I’ve emailed a few companies to see if they wanted to be part of our journey. Only trusted ones with solid reputations. Because if we’re going to be promoting a product it must be one that we believe in. but it must also offer value to our viewers.

While we’re a small YouTube channel, our story is compelling it seems.

Recently the Dutch company Bulbi.nl decided to give us a hand with our public garden in the form of a €100 voucher on their site. 

But for us, finding the right partner meant more than getting free flowers. In fact, in business, there’s a principle that we’ve always followed “a deal that’s only good for one is good for no one”. And thankfully Bulbi shares the same mantra as we do. So they opted to give our viewers 10% off on their summer bloom collection.

You can get 10% OFF on orders in Europe & UK

Use Enter promo code: SLP10. To get 10% OFF on Summer Bloom Collection.

The promo code is valid until July 1st 2023.

It works on Bulbi.nl & Bulbi.co.uk. 🙂

Now that we have a new partner onboard. I needed to review our must-have list. So a new requirement was added 

– Bloom must be part of Bulbi’s summer collection and thankfully it is extensive. Selecting blooms in Bulbi’s collection and planting them in our garden means that you, the end user will get to see how their flowers perform. And it may help you consider our new partner at the time of your purchase.

Landscaping software – would make things so much easier.

Ho my, if only I found a free garden landscaping software I often told myself. This would make things so so so much easier. But after lots of research, I can confirm that there’s no such thing as free landscaping software online that is worth downloading that I know of. So, I went back to my roots. Excel 😀

In the first phase of the public garden planning. I roughly mocked up our terraces in excel. It isn’t pretty but it’ll do the job. In the excel document, I added the flowers we planted and identified the water point.

I then looked back at our first requirement list and started looking for flowers that require little water and would complement well what we have. We know that the iris naturalises very well in the region. And thankfully on Bulbi’s site, one gets a lot of good value when buying iris in bulk. 

Planning for Iris.

I understand now that irises are fairly low-maintenance flowers. While some varieties will bloom twice a year the ones we got from our friend Henrique only bloom once. The beauty of these flowers is that their foliage provides a great point of interest all year round. I have around 20 blue iris tubers in the ground now. So I thought, ok let’s add more. And more I got.

I know that in the region Iris bloom mostly in May- June. So I had to find a flower companion that not only required little water but also one that would shoot bloom later in the season. My research brought me to google. “best flower companion for iris.” And then I realised that Alliums could be ideal since they require similar sun exposure, and need more or less the same amount of water. Allium is a low-scented flower as far as I know. But they are pollinator friendly and non-toxic to pets. Also thanks to our new friend Bulbi’s wide selection of Allium, I was able to find some that offer great value and are stunning too.

This meant that our top terrace was sorted.

Lower terrace – the biggest one – my biggest challenge.

Because I know the upper terrace flower has no scent. I needed to find blooms that would compensate for that in the lower terrace right under the iris. I already have 3 hydrangeas planted there in the upper part and I know that these guys once mature will take up a lot of space. And a significant amount of water too. According to google 1 inch 3x a week. But I also know that I can move the hydrangea if I need to.

So I started looking for perennials that are pollinator friendly, would marry well with hydrangea, needed similar sun exposure, have a great scent, and would have similar water requirements. Initially came up with a platter of different Lilies, Lupins and so so so much more. But I remember what was recommended to me “Sindy, keep things simple” so I opted for only adding 1 flower type there.

After looking for a hydrangea planting companion my research brought me to bulbi’s site once more where I found stunning peony at a good price. 

I didn’t want to only put 1 variety there, so I picked 2 because of their different blooming time and visual appeal.

One flower type, I told myself. That should be easy enough to care for. Planting Peony now also means that with the years I’ll have a bigger flower bush and that terrace is massive. So it seems wise to me to think about how the plants would establish themselves over the years. 

Small budget big space lot of water

Little did I know the other lower terrace on the left-hand side would be as challenging as the largest one we have. Even more challenging because we have excess water there in the winter. So I had to find a perennial, that would take a lot of space with the years, and could pair well with Arium Lily and Hydrangea.

In this case, too, google was my friend when finding plant companions.  

Hosta 6 plants for €7.95 on bulbi.nl

Did you know: Hostas are drought tolerant, yet like moist well-drained soil? 

Another thing I took into account when planning for this terrace is the flower height.

You see, I don’t want our visitors to be exposed to a wall of flowers at the entrance of the stairway to heaven. So I looked for smaller perennials that I could add in between my Arium lily and plants that were low maintenance as well. After much research, I decided to add Hosta at the front. And because I only have a few hydrangeas at the back, I decided that campanula would do well as they too take more and more space with the years. So might as well start them now, and they’ll grow in harmony with the flowers we already have on that terrace.

After selecting all these blooms, my €100 budget had almost reached its end. But I still needed extra flowers to create a point of interest this year even if the public garden is only at phase one.

So I opted to buy a few packs of annual seeds. Flower seeds are good value for sure, I’m almost guaranteed blooms this year and because flower seeds are somewhat cheap, I don’t have to overthink things because if I mess up, we don’t lose lots of euros in the process.

My conclusion

Truth be told, planning our 3 terraces took me days.  And yes I have over-complicated things in my thought process. But it’s this journey of complication that made me realise how important it is to keep things simple. This year what I need to focus on are the flowers that’ll eventually take up the largest space. I need to give time to the plants to establish themselves. Rome was not built in a so, not will our public garden.

As always any gardening tips are always welcome. But know that the bloom order is already placed. So the flowers mentioned in this post need to have a home if you are suggesting moving them around. Looking forward to hearing your feedback on my thought process.

Here is the current layout for the terraces.

Lol Sometimes even a simple life is complicated it seems 🙂

The First bloom we planted for our public garden. Make sure to subscribe to see how our new blooms will perform in North Portugal.

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