We reach Cynthia Dulude on the phone at the beginning of March, when her gardening notebook has just landed on the shelves of bookstores. The release date is no coincidence: it coincides with sowing time, every budding gardener will tell you.
“Gardeners, we only have about three months off in the year,” she laughs. At the end of October, we tidy up the yard, then we can already start sowing again in February. »
But how did plants come into the life of Cynthia Dulude, best known for her skills as a makeup artist? The love story began six years ago, when she and her boyfriend arrived in their first home, in Longueuil. “That’s when it all came crashing down. We started to do interior renovations, then decoration… Then, it was transposed outside: I wanted to play with my first perennials,” recalls the young woman.
That’s how she started creating flower beds (“with my mother’s help, because I didn’t know anything about it!”). Those who have followed her for a long time are well aware of her adventures in the world of gardening, since she has documented everything on her YouTube vlog channel, which she maintains alongside her main channel. For the past two years, she has also had an Instagram account dedicated to her green passion, Jardin Rêverie.
“I wanted a place to write everything down, to inspire me,” she says. Since she couldn’t find anything on the market that met her needs, she created her own notebook four years ago. It was by dint of using it that the idea germinated in his head…
“Eventually, I thought I could make an official version of it and, while we were at it, we could sell it too. And now that she’s got it in her hands, she’s really enjoying it: “It’s really my dream notebook, based on the one I made by hand, which was getting obsolete.” »
The notebook is designed in such a way as to become the greatest accomplice of the gardener, who will be able to use it from year to year. Divided into several sections separated by vertical tabs, it first has some more general advice, then its heart is devoted to the garden and the vegetable patch. In each of these two sections, several cards where you can note the details of each variety that you have planted, whether it is a hosta or a tomato plant. We can thus know when the plants were bought, in which month they bloom… because no, we do not necessarily remember them by heart, especially when we have a lot of them.
There is also a section devoted to sowing, lined or squared pages to take notes, monitoring calendars… It is now that we should start filling it out, planning and getting inspired, believes Cynthia Dulude. Because in the spring, we will be outside, hands in the ground, making these ideas bloom that will have first germinated in our notebook.
