PlantBuddies
“It’s like online dating for plants!
An easy to use tool that helps you with companion planting. Need a good compaion for your plant? Find it here fast.”
Roles: Idea to Product
With: Serlo Education / Kati Landsiedel
Release: 2016
View live: plantbuddies.serlo.org
Interlude: What is Companion Planting?
Some plants like to grow next to each other, provide each other with nutrients, structrual support or even repell pests. Other plants outright dislike each other. Companion Planting uses this knowledge for better results in the garden.
Idea
While Companion Planting itself is fascinating the tables that most people use to find good combinations can be quite scary.
The idea was to make a very easy to use and fast way to find companions. And it should also be charming – I consider this important for the non-tech savvy gardening crowd.
For the subject of sustainabilty at Serlo Education we always search for ways to make the content more accessible and interactive so PlantBuddies was a good fit for that.
Approach
PlantBuddies is a Progressive Web App so it works offline even without installation but can also be installed and then feels like a native app (reliably on Android/Chrome but support is increasing fast).
The interface is minimalistic and focuses on performance. Even though it does not show, the amount of information accessible is even greater than with the tables above.
Result
The Web App is online at plantbuddies.serlo.org.