I found a new interest outside the digital world: gardening and taking care of plants. I had no idea how to do it, so I took the overkill software-engineering approach. I built a fully automated app with all the information I need, so I don't kill any plants.

Garden App is a progressive web app with four parts: a plant database, a collection of the plants in my own garden, an auto-generated task list and a set of how-to guides. It installs on a phone like a native app.

The database holds 133 plants for a temperate Belgian climate, and every fact is backed by a source (the RHS and Wikipedia). Within a single species, multiple cultivars are supported.

The task list is the core idea. For every plant in my garden, the app combines its care rules (prune after flowering, deadhead, protect from frost) with the current month, and that gives the tasks I should do now. Each task links to a how-to guide, and a progress bar keeps it a little playful. With a weather forecast, frost-protection tasks only show up when frost is actually coming. Favorites and a pot planner that works out which plant fits in which pot round it off.

Garden App consists of 2 components:

• > frontend: Angular PWA
• > backend: Django REST with JWT authentication

The screenshots below show demo data.