Questions & Answers
How the thing works, what it costs, and what becomes of your photographs. If something has gone wrong rather than merely puzzled you, support is over here.
Beginning
Do I need an account?
No. No name, no email address, no password, nothing to forget. Open the app and it works. The garden lives on your telephone and belongs to you — which is pleasant, and also means that deleting the app deletes the garden. The app says this out loud, once, at the moment there is finally something worth losing — not on the first screen, where it would be a warning about nothing, and not every week. From there the answer is two telephones rather than one: a code of twelve characters puts the whole garden on a second phone, and a garden kept in two places is a garden that survives a dropped one.
What does it cost to begin?
Nothing. The app is free, and you arrive with ten actions to spend as you please. No card, no trial that quietly becomes a subscription on the fourteenth day, no countdown in the corner.
What is an action?
One identification, one question to Garden Me, or one light check — anything where the app has to stop and think. Everything else is free and always will be: the reminders, the year wheel, the pest tracking, the journal, the weather warnings. The one exception is the shopping list, which is written afresh from your particular garden every time it changes — no two gardens being alike, it is the one answer we cannot work out once and share with everybody — so it comes with a subscription, or costs a single action.
Must I spend an action to add a plant?
Not at all. If you already know it is a rhubarb, type “rhubarb” and it costs nothing whatever — no photograph, no thinking, no action. You may record an entire garden that way and still have all ten in hand for the shrub by the fence that nobody has ever been able to name.
Will it remind me to water?
Yes, and it works out how often on its own — from the pot or the ground it stands in, the light it gets and how much the plant forgives. A small pot in full sun is every other day; a snake plant on a windowsill is once a fortnight; an established apple tree in open ground gets no watering reminder at all, because it does not need one and a reminder every five days is how people end up switching reminders off altogether. You can override any of it in one tap. And if it has rained on something standing outside, the reminder simply does not come — the app already knows what the weather did, and nagging you the morning after a downpour would be worse than saying nothing.
Can I read the app in one language and garden in another?
Yes. They are two questions and they used to be one, which was a problem for anyone who does not live where they read. The country decides the climate every piece of advice is built on; the language decides only what you read. A Norwegian on the Costa Blanca can now have Spanish weather and Norwegian words instead of having to choose which half should be wrong.
Does it work without a signal?
The garden itself does — plants, reminders, tasks, notes, the journal, all of it sits on the telephone and opens whether or not there is a bar of coverage, which is the usual state of affairs at a cabin. Identification and questions need the network, since that is where the thinking happens.
What it costs
What happens when the ten run out?
Nothing breaks, and it is not the end of the road. Every plant you have recorded stays where it is, the reminders keep arriving, the watering nudges keep coming and the weather still warns you — none of that is counted, and none of it ever will be. Only the thinking pauses, and the app says plainly that this is what has happened rather than sitting there looking broken, because an app out of credit and an app with no signal look identical from the sofa. Three fresh actions arrive at the start of every month, and the app tells you the date. The ten are a welcome; the three are so that a garden you tend twice a year is still a garden we can answer questions about.
Which subscription should I take?
There is one, which makes this an easier question than it used to be. Gardener on hand is sixty actions a month, which is more than a large garden manages to use — and that is rather the point, since you stop counting and simply ask. There were three plans for a while, and they differed only in a number almost nobody reached, so choosing between them meant deciding something you had no way to decide. If you are already on Bronze, Silver or Gold, those keep running exactly as they are.
May I change my mind afterwards?
Yes, in iOS Settings under your name, then Subscriptions. Moving up takes effect at once; moving down takes effect when the month you have already paid for runs out. You may also stop entirely, and everything you have recorded remains.
If I do not use my sixty actions this month, do they carry over?
No. A subscription gives you sixty actions every month and the count starts again on the first — sixty in August, sixty in September, not seven hundred saved up by Christmas. It is a monthly allowance rather than a bank account, which is what makes it cheap per action, and the app now says which date yours renews so you are not left guessing whether to buy or to wait. Actions bought outright behave the opposite way: those never expire, and the app spends the month's allowance first, so a pack bought in spring is still waiting after a summer of subscribing.
Twenty actions costs about the same as a month of the subscription. Why?
Because you are buying two different things. The subscription is sixty actions a month, every month, and it stops when you stop it. Twenty actions is twenty actions, and they sit there until you use them — through a winter, or two, or until you remember the app exists again in April. A subscription is always the better rate per action; that is rather the point of one. Buying outright is for gardens that want attention twice a year, where a monthly bill would be an insult.
Gardens and plants
May I have more than one garden?
As many as you have places, each with its own name, its own kind, and — this matters more than it sounds — its own country. The cabin in Finland is then advised about Finnish winters rather than about yours. A garden below the equator has its seasons turned the right way round without being asked. Switch between them from the header, and every reminder and warning follows.
I have a garden and houseplants. Do I have to choose?
No, and you should not. Keep one of each: a garden for outside and a second garden for indoors, each with its own name, and the app treats them as the two different things they are. The outdoor one gets frost warnings, mulching and a sowing calendar. The indoor one gets none of that and an indoor year instead. Switching between them is one tap, and nothing you record in one ever leaks into the other — which matters, because advice written for a bed is actively wrong for a pot on a bookshelf.
I have no garden at all — only houseplants. Is there anything here for me?
Yes, and it is a different app when you say so. Choose indoors as the kind of garden — it covers a house, a flat, or a cabin you reach at weekends — and the outdoor year goes away: no frost warnings for a plant on your bookshelf, no mulching, no pests that arrive on the wind. What replaces it is the indoor year, which runs on light rather than on temperature — which is why the busiest month inside is the darkest one, and why the watering most often goes wrong in November, when the plant slows down and its owner does not. The app keeps seven indoor jobs across the year and tells you which one belongs to this month. It works in January, which is more than a garden can say.
Can a sameie or borettslag use this for the shared grounds?
That is a kind of garden of its own in the app. Three things about a shared courtyard change the advice, and all three are built in. Nobody owns it, so the work happens on a communal day twice a year: the app favours what survives being left alone between those days, and says plainly when a job wants a contractor rather than a Saturday. Children play there, so anything toxic or thorny is said out loud rather than left in a footnote. And boards change — so the advice is written to still make sense to whoever takes over, naming the plant and the month rather than saying “as before”. The shopping list quantifies, because the money is a line in the annual accounts. When the board member who keeps it moves out, twelve characters hand the whole garden to the next one, photographs and all.
I named a garden badly, or chose the wrong country.
Both are corrected in a moment — open the garden list and tap the pencil beside the one in question. Names get typed in a hurry and countries get chosen before one has thought about the cabin, and neither ought to be permanent.
May I keep several photographs of the same plant?
Yes, and you should. Photograph the label at the garden centre so the identification has printed text to work from, then replace the cover picture with the plant itself once it is in the ground. The rest gather in the journal, and a rose acquires a history.
It got the plant wrong.
First, look at whether it told you the season was against it. Every identification knows what month it is where you stand, and where that month genuinely costs it evidence it says so in a sentence and names what would settle the matter — a jasmine photographed after flowering and a plum tree in leaf are a harder pair in August than in May, and it will admit that rather than quietly guess. Then say so — there is a button beneath every identification that makes it think again without repeating an answer you have already rejected, and it costs nothing. You may also tell it what you believe it to be: “this is a plum tree, I am fairly certain” is treated as the strongest evidence in the room, since you are standing beside it and we are not.
Do the reminders arrive when the app is closed?
Yes — they are proper notifications, and they arrive whether or not you have opened the app since Tuesday. Especially then. If they become too much during a busy month, they can be paused without losing anything; the year wheel keeps turning underneath.
Which languages does it speak?
Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, English, German, Dutch, French, Polish, Finnish and Italian, with advice that knows the difference between a Norwegian winter and a Dutch one. Seventeen countries may be chosen for a garden, including three below the equator.
Sharing
If the garden is only on my telephone, how does the neighbour see it?
Because sharing uploads a copy. When you make a link we take a snapshot of that garden — the plant names, what wants doing, the notes for whoever is watering, and a small photograph of each plant — and place it on our server so that a browser may open it without an app or an account. It is the one occasion on which the garden leaves your telephone, and it is the only way a link could possibly work. The copy deletes itself after ninety days, or sooner if you ask.
Can the two of us keep the same garden?
Yes, and without inventing an account between you. One of you opens Share the garden and gets a code of twelve characters; the other types it in. From then on it is one garden on two telephones — she adds the plum tree, you tick off the pruning, and each of you sees the other. Both phones hold the whole garden and work without a signal; our server only keeps the last thing you agreed on. If a merge ever looks wrong, one button puts the garden back exactly as it stood before it.
Do the photographs travel too?
Between the two of you, yes — otherwise one of you photographs a new plant and the other is left looking at an empty frame. They stay on our server only for as long as you share, at most ninety days from the last time the phones spoke, and they are deleted the moment either of you stops. If you do not share your garden with anybody, not a single photograph ever leaves your telephone.
What happens if I lose my telephone?
The honest answer is that the garden goes with it, unless you have done one of two things. There is no account to recover it from — that is the same choice that spared you a password, and it cuts both ways. So take the export now and again and send it to yourself, or share the garden with a second telephone, in which case that phone is the copy and keeps itself up to date. The app will say this to you once, quietly, when your garden has grown large enough to be worth losing.
What exactly does the neighbour get to see?
That one garden, as it stood when you made the link, and nothing else: no other garden of yours, no purchase history, no location, no way back to you. They cannot change anything, and there is nothing to sign into.
Trust
Is the advice to be trusted?
It is generated, and it can be wrong. Treat it as a well-read friend rather than an authority: helpful, usually right, occasionally confident about something it ought not to be. Do not eat anything on our say-so, and check anything that genuinely matters — particularly where children and pets are concerned.
Are my photographs used to train an AI?
No. They pass through our server to Anthropic in order to be answered, and Anthropic's commercial terms are that traffic through their API is not used to train their models. We keep no copy ourselves — the single exception being the small thumbnails in a garden you have chosen to share, which expire after ninety days.
What do you actually know about me?
Remarkably little, and none of it a name. There is a device identifier so that your allowance and your purchases find their way back to you, a count of actions used, and — if you have allowed weather warnings — your area rounded to about a kilometre, so that we know the valley and not the address. Nothing is sold and nothing advertises to you. The particulars are in the privacy policy, and the deletion request is one email.
Not answered here?
magnus@bjelkerud.noIn Norwegian or English, whichever you prefer. A real person reads it, and there is no ticket number.