User guide · getting started · 2 min read
Tell us where you grow, and the advice changes to match.
GardenBuddy.au is not a one size fits all site. Someone with a quarter acre out the back and someone with four pots on a third floor balcony are solving different problems. Start here asks three quick questions, your postcode, where you grow and what you need most, and answers right there on the page.
Nothing is locked in. Change it any time, or clear it entirely.
Why we ask
A balcony is not a small garden, it is a different problem. On the ground your limits are usually timing, spacing and pests. On a balcony you are rationing three things a ground gardener never thinks about: light, floor space and weight. Advice that ignores that is worse than no advice, because it sounds authoritative and still gets you a dead seedling.
The three questions
1. Your postcode. Four digits. It picks your climate zone, so what you are told to plant is right for this month where you live. If you have an account with a postcode saved, it fills in for you.
2. Where you grow. One of these three:
- I have a patch of ground. Beds, a strip down the side of the house, pots on the patio. The soil is the ground, or it is sitting on it.
- I grow on a balcony. Everything in pots, a wall on one side, a rail on the other, usually a slab overhead.
- I grow with other people. A community garden, a street of neighbours, or a few mates who each grow something different and swap. You still garden in ground or in pots, so this one sets your own space up first and adds the sharing on top.
3. What you need most. Starting for the first time, a garden that runs with little time, a better garden than last year, or feeding the household. This picks the three first steps you see, each one a link to a real page.
What your answers change
The answer turns up under the questions straight away. On the ground you get the crops for your zone this month. On a balcony you get the crops that cope in a pot, least sun first, with the pot size each one needs. With the community option you also get the way into swapping. Where you grow sets your growing space to ground level or balcony, which is what the planting advice, the sun model and the pot sizing all read from. Joining an actual group still happens by invitation from somebody in it.
On My Garden the option you picked is marked as your choice, and the parts that do not apply to you fold away. A ground gardener does not need the balcony sun geometry sitting in the middle of their page, so it collapses to a single line they can open if they ever want it.
You can change it any time, from Start here or from My Garden. Every answer stays on screen with yours ticked, so you can change one and the page changes with it. Start again clears the lot. It does not touch a garden you have already set up.
If you do not have an account yet
You can still answer. Your answers are kept in your browser, and where you grow and what you need follow you into your account when you make one. You are not asked for an email to use it.
Plenty of people have a patch and a balcony. Pick whichever you actually walk out to most days and set the other one up afterwards. If you have not started growing anything yet, have a look at the demo garden first.