Getting started

Open Plants and choose Add plant. Give it a name, start typing a species to pick one from the suggestions, and optionally add a photo and a space (“kitchen window”).

Picking a species from the suggestion list is the step that matters. It is what wires up the care guide, the pet-toxicity note, and a suggested care schedule. A species you type freehand saves perfectly well, but it stays just a label.

When you add a plant with Add suggested care tasks ticked and a recognised species, we set up a routine for you:

• If the species matches one of our curated care bundles (tropical houseplant, succulent or cactus, and so on), you get that whole bundle — typically watering, fertilising and pruning on sensible intervals.
• If it doesn’t match a bundle but our species data has a watering cadence, you get a single watering task on that cadence.
• If the species is freehand text, or the species data has no watering cadence, you get nothing automatically.

You can always add tasks by hand from the plant’s page — nothing here is required.

Care guides come from an external species database, and they only appear for plants saved with a species we recognised — that is, one you picked from the autocomplete rather than typed freehand.

To fix it, edit the plant and re-pick the species from the suggestion list. If the species genuinely isn’t in the database, there is no guide to show, and we won’t invent one.

Inside the app, press ⌘K on a Mac or Ctrl+K elsewhere. It searches your plants (by name, species and location) and your tasks (by plant name, task type and notes), showing up to eight of each. Press Enter on a result to jump to it.