Reema's Garden – A New Beginning

Now this is a journey that I would like to document every part of! After I had put Krushi (My Agro Project) to halt which was around September 2019, I had decided, for next one year, I want to give it all.

My expertise being in doing what I do, I decided to start my own Gardening Hub in Dhayari Pune.

I opened my Gardening Hub in October 2019. Click here to have a look at our Studio.

October 2019 wasn’t easy. I was ecstatic and elated that I had found a perfect space for my office and Workshop. However, here’s the thing. Now I had to build it, as in I had to set up my office and my business. So initial few days were about cleaning and getting the place in order. The next few days were about setting up the right kind of furniture. Along came all the business compliance and other documentation and licencing that needed to be in place. Next was hiring. I had hired one office admin. She wasn’t good. So I had to fire her and hire another employee. That wasn’t easy. I have never before fired anyone. Then came one of the biggest challenge.. putting out the word saying “we are here” … You guessed it right… Marketing. I had a good experience of gardening but Marketing… I was a big zero in marketing. I am still grasping. It gets very challenging and overwhelming at times.. But its inevitable..

On 3rd November 2019, I conducted my first workshop in my Gardening Hub! Here’s the thing… We had just 2 participants! I remember very clearly and distinctly how scared I was about having just 2 participants. If you would have seen my previous posts of my workshops.. I had got used to having at least 15-20 participants… But then this is what fresh start looks like…. All sorts of thoughts like “what will they think?” …. “Will they be comfortable?”…. “What if they don’t like the workshop because there weren’t many people?”… and on and on went the thoughts… There came a point and I said to myself, “Lets see what happens!!” … And here’s what happened…

What I love the most is… I had just 2 participants – Neha & Vinita and I could achieve so much. Here’s the feedback that Neha left for me..

That was my humble beginning. Here’s me telling you.. If I can do it.. so can you… Don’t be scared to start small…

Happy Gardening 🙂

And We have launched our YouTube Channel!

5 reasons why you should attend the Gardening Workshop

I am often asked – why should we attend your Gardening Workshop? Or
Will we become an expert on Gardening after attending the Gardening Workshop?
Or the best one & my favorite –
Everything is available on Google, why should we attend a workshop?

So here’s why you should attend a Gardening Workshop

To understand the fundamentals of Gardening: Here’s to answer the first question. You need to understand the basics and fundamentals of Gardening. Things that will not change. And if you ask me what are the fundamentals of Gardening – its understanding your soil. You get the soil right, you can grow anything.

To understand the difference between theory & Practical: Here’s the thing with Gardening, while you can learn all you want on Gardening, your confidence will develop only when you put it to practice. And we help you do that.

Where to start and how to build: There is no denying that you have everything available on Google and YouTube. Even this blog post aims to reach you through Google search. But here’s the thing – while Google is great to search for a particular topic, its difficult to help you get started. Our workshop aims to help you get started and then slowly build your knowledge step by step – using Google and YouTube and all other online sources.

Avoid the Confusion and Overwhelm: There are a thousand different ways/methods/approaches to do something – how do you know which one is the best or which one works the best for you? Here’s where a workshop comes in handy. When we teach you the fundamentals – you realize that as long as the fundamentals are in place, it doesn’t make a difference which method you choose.

Save Time, Money & Effort: Lets face it. There is nothing wrong in making mistakes but it comes with a price – Your Time, Money and Effort. And not mention a bad experience or disappointment, when a plant dies and you’re clueless as to what went wrong. Why not simply learn and then start. 🙂

And to sum it up and answer the second question – The 3 hour workshop is not designed to make you an expert but to help you understand the basics of Gardening and help you get started.

Happy Gardening 🙂

Reema's Garden – A Decade in Review

Did part 1 sound very optimistic and sweet and nice…????

Time to get a bit critical!! 😉

So lets start with some mistakes:

When the workshops started taking shape around Nov-Dec 2017, I had further ventured into Gardening Projects. Things didn’t turn out very well. But there was a lesson for a lifetime out there for me:

  • Gardening and landscaping are two entirely different ball games and need to be approached differently.
  • You need to be absolutely and sometimes brutally honest with your clients – even at the cost of your business. Because sooner or later it will cost you your Business.
  • There is no point in setting up Gardens for people who are not really into plants. Plants are a part of your life. Having plants just for their aesthetic appeal is no way to go about it.
  • Sooner or later you’re going to fall short on your business commitments. Doesn’t mean you don’t take your business seriously or that you’re not capable. I had really very badly beaten myself up for falling short on my commitments. I lived in an idealistic world where “if you’re not true to your commitment what good are you?” What I realized was, sooner or later you’re going to fall short on your business commitments. What you can do is, see to it that the client doesn’t suffer any financial loss due to your mistake. Communicate directly with your client and explain to them why you failed on the commitment and ask for forgiveness.
  • Sometimes we cannot see things that are very evident because we don’t want to see it. Something very similar happened with Krushi, my agro-project. It was way too ambitious. I didn’t have enough of resources – finance, man -power, know-how but i wanted to do it. Nevertheless – i will make it happen someday, just not today!

I am very optimistic about Krushi, I’ll revive it soon!! Its my dream Project. One i’ll never stop working towards. 🙂

I share this because there are lot of aspiring entrepreneurs out there, and I want to them to know… MISTAKES ARE INEVITABLE. But I also want to tell them

THE FREEDOM TO MAKE MISTAKES IS THE BIGGEST FORM OF FREEDOM & EMPOWERMENT!

Why do we need to learn Gardening?

Yes, I get this a lot. People often ask me is there really anything to learn about Gardening? Isn’t it like… you just put the sapling in soil/pot and its done? I tell them I wish it were that simple.. Here’s why do we need to learn container gardening –

This is a piece of land…

Look at the soil…

What is this soil?

Soil is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Have a look.

All the above factors together contribute and make the Soil eco-system (known as pedosphere) . All the above factors create a nexus/network that makes soil habitable.The following image will help you better understand the nature of soil.

Eco-system takes care of itself. For example, the insects and microbes decompose the organic matter and make nutrients available to plants. Or when the ground water rises, it brings minerals to the surface makes it available for the plants. Now when you decide to start Gardening – here’s what you’re doing –

YOU REMOVED A SMALL SECTION AND MOVED IT INTO

AND NOW YOU EXPECT THAT THE SOIL IN THIS POT/CONTAINER WILL ACT JUST LIKE THE SOIL IN THE LAND. But how will that happen? There is no Eco-system.

UNLESS YOU CREATE ONE!! 🙂 🙂

THAT’S WHAT GARDENING IS ALL ABOUT! 🙂

Happy Gardening!

If you find this post useful – please do like, share and comment – It keeps us going and helps us to create good quality content.

Reema's Garden – A Decade in Review

Happy New Year Folks! So, like everyone else, I decided to have a review the past year & decade..

The strange thing about review is it puts us in such critical and grateful thought process at the same time! I have decided to be very optimistic this year!!

Well well we will see!

I started Gardening somewhere around Sept-Oct 2015! A year into in and I knew I had fallen in love with Gardening.

I created this blog and wrote my first Blog Post on Gardening on 17th August 2016:

https://reemasgarden.com/2016/08/17/things-you-require-to-start-gardening/

After that, a year later, conducted my first ever Gardening Workshop on 19th November 2017. Here’s the event post I had created on Facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/events/134814100617264/

Here are some pics from the Gardening Workshop:

Then Many Workshops Followed:

I conducted workshop for school/college students

I then conducted another one for NGO called Hariyali in Mulund, Mumbai. I think that was in Jan 2018.

Then after conducting a few more workshops, around Feb-March 2018, I had pivoted to create an Not-for-Profit Organization for a very ambitious Agro-Project!!

http://krushi-foundation.com/

To be Continued….

Our Social Media Content Plan

https://www.facebook.com/reemasgarden/

You can follow us here on – https://www.facebook.com/reemasgarden/

https://www.instagram.com/reemasgarden/

You can follow us here on https://www.instagram.com/reemasgarden/

Happy Gardening 🙂

Happy New Year!

Reema’s Garden wishes you all a very very very Happy New Year!

Here's our plan for the New Year!

Its that time around the year when we share our content calendar & Plans!! So here’s how we plan to do it.

We will publishing 2 posts every week. One on Wednesday and the other on Sunday.

The posts on Wednesdays will be focused on Gardening. As always these posts are intended to simplify Gardening concepts aimed to encourage everyone to take up Gardening. I hope these posts will be helpful and help you solve all Gardening related queries. If you feel there are concepts that I haven’t discussed about or that you have doubts or queries related to gardening – please drop a comment. I’ll try my best to answer all your queries.

The posts on Sundays will be an update about us – Reema’s Garden or a personal blog from me – Reema Gopalan. These posts will cover topics like – what we are currently doing, challenges we are facing, our achievements, entrepreneurship and a few personal blog posts from me.

And here’s the best part –

If you had those moments wherein you could feel plants having such a strong impact on your life that it changed your life.. momentarily or permanently… share your story with us! We would like to publish your story, experience, article, journey on Gardening, plants and more!!

Share Your Story with Reema's Garden
Share Your Story with us!
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