No zip code input, no zoom out. It's either scroll repeatedly or allow you to get my location so that I can check some location in California. No thanks.
It might handle different locations a bit differently, but whichever option I use (feed insects, easy care, soak up rain, etc) it basically suggests me to just leave the most common weeds grow to end up with a heath covered in brambles/wild roses/various thorny weeds.
Which is logical I guess, if the goal is just to have native plants that grow naturally here. But I suspect few people are looking for this without any consideration to the ornamental and recreational qualities of the plants.
Nice idea, but given how limited the coverage is, you could save people a lot of time with a map, rather than everyone having to parse 17 regions to work out if they are in one you cover.
This is very cool! I got into native plants a few years ago when I moved out to the country. I have been using LLMs to help me with what to plant and where but they aren’t perfect. A couple things that’d be handy / cool to add:
- more info on deer hardiness
- more info on growth speed (show only fast growers)
- would be cool to add a feature for sets of plants too like “good for wild turkeys” or “plant these for all season pollination eg a set of plants that bloom early, middle, late”
That's pretty nice. I had to use mediterranean France as the closest analogue to North Atlantic Spain/Portugal, but the recommendations look about in line with our native flora.
However, I don't think any of the stated goals lined up with my use case here - in this specific region, we're trying to deal with rapidly warming/drying summers, and I'd be looking for recommendations to help with soil water retention, shade, etc.
Biggest obstacle for me is the giant invasive Ailanthus tree in my back yard. Apparently its roots produce allelopathic chemicals, and I’m finding that some native plants are unaffected (spicebush, wood fern) but others can’t cope at all (asters, cup plant).
I can’t find much if any info on this, so it’s been an ongoing experiment.
Have you considered killing the alianthus tree? I know loosing a big tree is a tough sell, but tree of heaven is one of our worst invasives in the eastern US. Every year that tree is producing wind-born seeds that mean it is going to be causing huge problems for anyone attempting to plant natives anywhere in your neighborhood and actively degrading any natural spaces in the area. You’d do the environment a lot more good just by getting rid of that tree than via anything you plant under it.
Also as an aside, it’s possible that the problem for your cup plant and asters is shade, not chemicals. There are a lot of species of aster so I can’t say for sure there, but cup plant is a prairie species that absolutely wants full sun.
Either way though, please, please, kill your tree of heaven.
as a native plant nerd and GIS dev i love the idea
however
i think for an experienced developer using claude the app itself would be easy to build
it is the underlying domain knowledge of "what plant actually grows where" is the actual hard part and im not getting the impression that your system is reliable in that area yet
- Pacific Northwest
- Southern California
- Central California Coast
Which is logical I guess, if the goal is just to have native plants that grow naturally here. But I suspect few people are looking for this without any consideration to the ornamental and recreational qualities of the plants.
Congrats on the launch!
However, I don't think any of the stated goals lined up with my use case here - in this specific region, we're trying to deal with rapidly warming/drying summers, and I'd be looking for recommendations to help with soil water retention, shade, etc.
Biggest obstacle for me is the giant invasive Ailanthus tree in my back yard. Apparently its roots produce allelopathic chemicals, and I’m finding that some native plants are unaffected (spicebush, wood fern) but others can’t cope at all (asters, cup plant).
I can’t find much if any info on this, so it’s been an ongoing experiment.
Also as an aside, it’s possible that the problem for your cup plant and asters is shade, not chemicals. There are a lot of species of aster so I can’t say for sure there, but cup plant is a prairie species that absolutely wants full sun.
Either way though, please, please, kill your tree of heaven.
Source: My wife does this for a living.
however
i think for an experienced developer using claude the app itself would be easy to build
it is the underlying domain knowledge of "what plant actually grows where" is the actual hard part and im not getting the impression that your system is reliable in that area yet