User guide · getting started · 2 min read
Tell us where you grow, and the advice changes to match.
Garden Buddy 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 is where you tell us which one you are, and it takes one click.
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 answers
- 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.
What your answer changes
It sets your growing space to ground level or balcony. That is what the planting advice, the sun model and the pot sizing all read from. If you pick the community option, the site also tailors which guides and tools it suggests, with the sharing side included. 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. All three options stay on screen after you choose, with yours ticked, so switching is one click. There is also a “clear it” link if you would rather we forgot.
If you do not have an account yet
You can still answer. The choice is kept in your browser, and it follows you into your account when you make one. Nothing else is stored, and 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.