Building Apartments building

Decide on the style of your building and make a garden to suit. So if your building is very symmetrical a symmetrical garden may look better, rather then just odd shrubs around the place. If your building is done in a recognized style such as minimalist then the garden should also be done in that same style.
Since there is little room as I said above, narrow strips of garden may be best.
Think flowers at the front and shrubs to the back or sometimes taller flowers/shrubs in the middle and lower flowers around if the bed is away from the building.
Some kind of water feature if there is room.
Think what colours you want, does it compliment your building? Maybe go for a colour scheme.
Use terrain paint or sometimes just the dirt maxis tile under plants.
Also if you think sims can't get to the plants or there are a lot that will need trimming warn people of that and give a link to the garden mods page.

It depends how you want to garden really. Do you want your sims to be able to reach all the plants or are you going to use a perfect garden mod?

I like to put the 2 cheats, move objects on and snapobjectstogrid false on so that i can just place randomly. Then I take a look to see if it needs adjusting, seems to work for me Before you place the plants like this make sure you've put any garden edging down that you want to use and also ensure that there is a one tile wide pathway for the sims to walk on, otherwise they won't be able to go anywhere

Google gardens, in the style that you want, works wonders!

Hope all that helps? I have a list of untried garden mods if you need them.

Thanks for sharing . Also you can add some tips like for better business.

@Karen Lorraine your list of garden mods would not have to keep the pets from rolling in the flowers and destroying them..? i got one already to stop the sims from doing the silly smell the flowers move, one to water plants out of reach and one to cut plants out of reach.

EDIT: Nevermind! I didn't read up. this theme is so confuzzling

Theme is confuzzling? Is simple - click on title - go to first post. Click on little(ish) arrow - last post. Is how it works everywhere on this theme.

After some time of distractions, and some thinking, i chanched the outside of the building a bit:
Front:
   
Back/one side:
   
Other side:
   

I also finally did some basic dividing on the inside. these are the outside walls for the apartments. i still have to divide them in rooms, add bathrooms, etc.
Top floor: ( 2 apartments, big balconies)
   
3th floor: ( 3 apartments, each with a balcony)
   
2th floor: (4 apartments, each with a balcony. custom content: glass wallwindows between two of the balconies, in the back)
   
Ground floor: ( 2 apartments)
   

Now what i am unsure of, is what to do with the front area of the ground floor... make them into recreational rooms, with some games, couches, etc... move back the front walll, and get some garden space up front, or ad two more, small, apartments...

But yes, here are the changes so far. like, dislike?

I like where you're going with this. You might find when you start to furnish these apartments that you need less apartments. Also for the sake of realism some of those balconies look as tho they could do with some support columns.