For Garden 9 actually 10 life is only what's usually lost, at least that's seem the number. Still, gathering spare lives will release you earlier for later, so 20 is still a good number.
Garden 10 is HARD by maps, but there are some good news:
- as startegy try to go for rows of specials. That's the way to win.
A "combo" to keep in mind: if you get any of the "colouring" or so to say "cloud" bonuses AND right then a rolling bonus (even if it rolls forward), you'll effect an even larger amount of balls, especially if the rows turn a lot.
About the cloud-bonuses: the "dot"-like icon eliminates the balls in its could, while the "flower"-like iconed one re-colours the ones in its cloud (to its own colour). This was actually pretty hard to test out
You'll most likely loose a life or two on each map of this garden, but fortunately there's a level (I think the 4th) what is a) an easy map b) all balls in the row contain a letter. So despite the row almost imediatelly filling the path, you have a good chance here to re-fill more then one life, and win without loss.
Garden 11:
it has 8 sublevels, all are insanely fast, although most are versions of earliest levels. The worst exception is what has the map of 8-6, but now has 3 rows.
Because of the speed of the levels no strategy can be followed, just hoping the best and shooting all your balls as fast as you can to the best place you can.
Don't forget you can shoot to nowhere you balls to despise them (on most levels).
One more garden to go, and one map what is unseen yet.
I suggest keeping 25-30 lives for the last go, what shouldn't require too much effort, considering you already accumlated a lot just to be on the safe side.