Know your garden
Three things shape what grows where you live: your soil type, your soil pH and your hardiness zone. Here is how to find each of them, from a free test in five minutes to a lab analysis you do once.
Why these three numbers matter
Plants do not choose your garden. You choose them, and they thrive or sulk based on the conditions you give them. Soil type controls drainage and how much air reaches the roots. Soil pH decides which nutrients are actually available to the plant. Your hardiness zone tells you which species survive your winter. Get these three right and most of the rest follows: the plant suggestions in Gardiflora become sharper, your eco-score climbs because you stop fighting your soil, and tasks line up with the conditions your plants actually meet.
Soil type: sand, silt, loam or clay
Soil texture is the mix of sand, silt and clay particles. Sandy soils drain fast, warm up early and need frequent feeding. Clay soils hold water and nutrients but compact easily and stay cold in spring. Loam, the gardener's dream, sits in the middle. The good news: you do not need a lab to find out where you land. The feel test takes under a minute. Take a moist handful and rub it between your fingers. Gritty means sand. Smooth and floury means silt. Sticky, holds-a-ball means clay. The ribbon test goes one step further: roll a moist handful into a sausage and squeeze it upward between thumb and forefinger. No ribbon at all is sandy soil. A short ribbon under 2.5 centimetres that breaks easily is loam. A long, flexible ribbon over 5 centimetres is clay-heavy soil. For a number rather than a feel, do the jar test. Fill a clear jar one-third with soil, top up with water, add a teaspoon of dish soap to break the clumps, shake hard and let it settle for 48 hours. Sand drops in the first minute, silt over the next two hours and clay finally settles on top. Measure each layer with a ruler and you have your texture as a percentage. The Clemson Home and Garden Information Center and Colorado State Extension both publish step-by-step protocols if you want to be precise.
Soil pH: how acidic or alkaline is your soil
Soil pH runs from acidic (low numbers) through neutral (around 7) to alkaline (high numbers). It matters because pH controls nutrient availability. Iron locks away in alkaline soil, which is why hydrangeas turn pink there. Phosphorus locks away at the extremes. Most ornamentals and vegetables want pH 6.0 to 7.0. Blueberries, rhododendrons and heathers want 4.5 to 5.5. There are five ways to find out where your garden sits. The free one: look at the weeds that already grow well. Sorrel, plantain and field horsetail point to acid soil. Wild mustard, poppies and chicory point to alkaline soil. A directional clue, not a number, but it costs nothing. The kitchen version: split a small soil sample in two. Add vinegar to one. If it fizzes, your soil is alkaline. Mix the other with water and add baking soda. If that fizzes, your soil is acidic. No reaction from either points to roughly neutral. This gives you a yes or no on acid versus alkaline, not a precise pH. For a real number, pH strips or a home kit cost around ten euros at any garden centre. Mix soil with distilled water (tap water has its own pH), dip the strip, match the colour. Accurate to about half a pH unit, which is plenty for choosing plants. An electronic pH meter runs twenty to fifty euros and lets you take many readings, but cheap models drift and need calibration with buffer solutions to stay honest. Treat readings within 0.3 of each other as the same. The most accurate option is mailing a sample to a soil testing lab for thirty to eighty euros. You get back not just pH but nutrients, organic matter content and often texture too. Worth doing once when you start a new garden or fix a stubborn problem. Cornell University's SoilNOW guide is a good reference for the methodology.
Hardiness zone: which plants survive your winter
A hardiness zone is the average annual minimum temperature where you live, banded into numbered zones. Zone 5 is much colder than zone 9. In Western Europe most gardens sit between zone 7 and zone 8. The Netherlands, Belgium, northern France and most of Germany are zone 7. Western and coastal France, southern UK and Ireland tilt toward zone 8. Southern France and the Mediterranean reach zone 9 and 10. The easiest way to find your zone is to look it up. The Royal Horticultural Society publishes a UK map. KMI/IRM covers Belgium, Météo France covers France and the Deutscher Wetterdienst covers Germany. Search for your town with 'hardiness zone' or 'plant hardiness'. For your actual microclimate, a min-max thermometer kept in the garden over a few winters gives you a more relevant number than any map. A walled town garden often runs one zone warmer than the open countryside ten kilometres away. The cross-check that costs nothing: look at what overwinters in your neighbourhood. Figs, olives and rosemary outdoors put you firmly in zone 8 or warmer. If only the hardiest natives survive, you are likely in zone 6 or colder.
Put it into your garden
Once you know your soil type, soil pH and hardiness zone, set them in your garden profile in the Gardiflora app. From there the plant suggestions, the eco-score and the seasonal tasks all start working with the conditions you actually have, instead of a generic average. If your numbers turn out to be at an awkward extreme, the answer is not always to amend the soil. Picking plants that already love what you have is the ecological short-cut, and it always wins.
