The message at the centre of Abelha 7 Trevos is deliberately small. To start, all you need is a pot. It is an unusually modest promise for a project that now has a community of more than 218,000 followers and over 57 million organic views across platforms.
The project began in 2018 as a personal one between José Rolão and his fiancée Daniela, inspired by their own experience of growing food at home. From the beginning they shared their mistakes as well as their successes, which is what made it honest, relatable and useful, and over time it developed into a strategic educational brand for people with little space, little experience or little confidence.
The result José values most is not the follower count. It is the messages he receives from people saying the project gave them the knowledge and the confidence to start their own home garden.
Local conditions, shorter formats
The challenge he identified was not a lack of home gardening content but the way it was being delivered. Much of what existed was lengthy, difficult to consume quickly and published inconsistently, and a great deal of it was made by Brazilian creators and therefore shaped by Brazil's climate and growing conditions. Portuguese audiences consume a lot of Brazilian content, which he sees as a good thing, but the differences in climate make locally relevant guidance essential.
He was not the first creator in Portugal to talk about home gardening, and he does not claim to have been. What he focused on instead was making the information shorter, more regular and more practical, and over time he believes he became one of the creators who listened most closely to the audience, answered the widest variety of real questions and used those questions to shape future content.
The strategy combined practical education, genuine storytelling, research and calculated growth. Having no formal training in agriculture, he has always communicated from the same level as his community, on the basis that if he can grow a home garden, so can they. He listens closely to followers' questions, researches each subject in depth and uses tools such as Google Trends to identify the main doubts and search behaviours around home gardening, which allows him to make useful, accessible and seasonal content based on real need.
He also made a conscious decision not to copy other creators, developing his own voice, formats and visual identity so that people could recognise a piece of content and immediately think of it as his way of doing things. Alongside the practical experience he added academic knowledge through two postgraduate qualifications in digital marketing and social media marketing.
Creating the opportunities rather than waiting for them
Once the project reached around 9,000 followers, José began investing strategically in paid media to help strong-performing content reach further. That initial investment has since been fully recovered, and the project is now self-sustaining through brand partnership budgets and revenue from Facebook Content Monetization.
He was equally direct about opportunities. He approached the publisher that later released his book, and many of his media interviews and features began with press pitches he sent himself. Community-building was central throughout, and even when the project had only 500 followers he treated the people there as a community rather than an audience, replying to comments as quickly and personally as he could.
Today the project is independently led, and he is responsible for every aspect of its communication and growth, defining strategy, researching and planning content, writing copy, filming, photographing, editing, managing the channels, analysing performance, replying to comments and messages, handling emails and partnerships and managing press relations. Daniela's idea started it in 2018 as an Instagram account documenting their garden, and by 2019 he had taken full responsibility for the strategy and day-to-day management. Between 2019 and 2021 there was a small commercial phase selling home-grown plants through OLX and at an ecological market in Almada, which gave him direct contact with the community and an understanding of its needs beyond social media. Daniela continued supporting the practical side of the garden for several years, and his parents have helped too, particularly with watering.
Recognition, and what it took
The project has been ranked among Portugal's top 1,000 TikTok accounts by Brinfer, one of the country's leading social media analytics platforms, reached the Portuguese Instagram top five in the Eco and Social Causes category, and José has been ranked sixth among science creators in Portugal by HypeAuditor.
It has also brought home gardening to some of Portugal's leading television channels and to both niche and mainstream publications, led to the publication of a book and created partnerships with organisations including Sociedade Ponto Verde and the European Commission, and it is part of the FuturaGri network. What matters most to him is that it has remained genuine, useful and close to its community while becoming a recognised and self-sustaining brand.
The lesson he takes from it is the value of a real sense of community, because in a niche like home gardening every share, comment and interaction creates meaningful engagement and reaches people who may genuinely benefit. Many of those interactions go well beyond content performance, with people sending photos of their gardens, sharing their progress and showing concern for him personally, which taught him that the strongest engagement comes from making people feel heard and part of something. On a personal level, having always been shy, the public exposure showed him he was capable of more than he thought, gave him the confidence to speak in public and appear on television, and taught him that he does not need to be perfect.
International recognition means a great deal because, at the start, few people believed the project could become what it is, not out of negativity but because the success seemed difficult to achieve. He stayed consistent for eight years while working full-time at a communications agency and completing a Master's degree in anthropology, two postgraduate qualifications and further courses in communication and digital marketing. Next he wants to build an app that helps people plan, manage and care for their own home gardens, publish a second book and keep developing formats that make practical gardening knowledge easier to access, with authenticity as the principle he expects to matter most, meaning every piece of advice has to be realistic and replicable at home.
The winner of Creator & Personal Brand of the Year at the Social Media Marketing Awards will be announced at the awards ceremony on 8 October in London.