I recently received a bad review on iTunes because a customer couldn’t find their desired plants... plants that were in the database. The reason they couldn’t find what they wanted turns out to be that they were using plural versions that altered the plants’ names (e.g. “Lillies” vs. “Lily”). So, some tips on how to find what you’re looking for.

The trick is to get as close to the plant’s name as possible. This means that you shouldn’t use plural versions. Because the search engine looks for the entire word if that word is not present in plural form, you won’t get results. So, its best to go with singular. Along these lines, shorter is better. For instance, “California poppy” brings up that plant. “Poppy” brings up all poppies in the database (I stopped counting at 50). “Poppies” on the other hand yields no results. Partial words can also be a strategy. But, they’ll yield a lot of results.

If you’ve tried these strategies and still can’t find your plants, then you may need to “create a new plant”. To do this, go to the My Gardens screen, press “Edit” and you’re on your way.

How do I add a garden?

You can add as many gardens as you’d like... all you need to do is: 1) click on the “My Gardens” button, 2) click “Edit” on the upper left portion of the screen, and 3) select “Add a new garden”. From there the application will walk you through all the steps necessary to name the garden, add a description and add photographs.

How do I add photos of my plants?

On the “My Gardens” screen, click on the plant to which you want to add a photo. On the “Plant Info” screen touch the default image (or photo) on the upper left. This will display your photo choices. If you have an iPhone, you can add an existing photo or take a new photo of your plant. If you have an iPod Touch, you can add an existing photo from your photo library. Your smartphone will lead you through the process from here.

One thing to note is that you can’t add photos to plants on the search screen. In addition, if you have the same plant in two separate gardens, adding a photo to one plant won’t add it to its doppelganger. This gives you the ability to have actual photos of every plant in each of your gardens.

How do I use the Wikipedia feature?

There are two ways. The first is to press the “Find” button, search for a plant, touch that plant, and then touch “Review Wikipedia page” link. The second is to select a plant on the My Gardens” screen, and then to touch “Review Wikipedia page” link. In both of these cases, the web browser will open up in the app. Clicking one of the five navigation buttons on the bottom of the screen or the Plant Info button at the top will take you back to the app.

Please note that there is not a wikipedia entry for every plant. The wikipedia page will often, in these cases, display other options that may be useful. And, of course, you can always create an entry for the missing plant!

What if the plant that I want to add is not in the built-in database?

Even with 40+ thousand plants in the database, your plant(s) may not be there. In these cases, we give you the ability to add a plant to your chosen garden. All you need to do is go to the “My Gardens” screen, use the arrows to get to the desired garden, click the “Edit” button, and then click “Create a new plant”. Fill in at least the “Common name” and “Botanical name” fields (although you can fill in a lot more than that) and click “Save”.

The plant that you have just created will be added only to the garden. We set it up this way because we didn’t want you to lose your entries should we choose to upgrade the plant library in future releases. So, we store the garden info separate from the main database and allow you to personalize your garden information without concern for losing all your changes if we choose to upgrade the plant library.

How do I add a note to a plant?

Actually, you can add a bunch more stuff than just notes, but more on that in a second. From the “My Garden” screen, choose a garden and then select a plant. On the “Plant Info” screen scroll down to find the “Notes” field, and write all you want. Once you’re on the “Plant Info” screen you can also add info for quantity, purchase date, planting date, height and color. And, if you have a lot of text to add, please use the Journal feature. It was intended to give you a place to keep a running diary (or journal!) for each of your gardens.