Field notes for a small garden
Grow what you love.
Know what is safe.
CarterGarden is a garden planner for iPhone. Draw your beds, log what you planted, and check whether a plant is safe for your cat or dog before it goes in the ground, with the answer sourced from the ASPCA.
Plate 01 · In the app today
Five honest tools, built and working
Nothing on this page is a mockup. These ship in the first version.
Plot your garden
Draw your beds the way they sit in the yard and read the whole plot at a glance.
Log your plants
Name, variety, potted or in the ground, planting date, and a notes line. The record everything else draws on.
Check pet safety
Per-pet toxicity verdicts from the ASPCA lists. When a name is ambiguous, it asks instead of guessing.
Watch the weather
Open the app and it reads your forecast against your beds: freeze, frost, heat, and wind, with the at-risk plants named.
Keep up with care
Watering and seasonal tasks on a cadence, shown in the app when you open it. Push notifications are on the roadmap.
Plate 02 · The part that matters most
Check the cat first
A surprising number of ordinary plants are toxic to cats and dogs. Lilies. Sago palm. The pothos on the shelf. CarterGarden gives a verdict per pet, using the ASPCA's lists of toxic and non-toxic plants.
Common names are messy. "Tulip" can mean the toxic bulb or a perfectly safe tree. When a name is ambiguous, the app shows the cautious answer and asks which plant you actually have. When a plant is not in the data, it says so rather than guessing it safe.
Is this safe for my pet?
An example to show the idea. The app checks the real ASPCA data.
Verdicts per pet, with the source cited.
Add rows and columns at the edges; beds merge when the same plant meets itself.
Plate 03 · On the grid
Your plot, drawn the way it sits
A garden is not a list. It is squares of dirt in a particular order. So you draw yours: add beds at the edges, drop in the plants you have logged, and read the whole thing at a glance. Plant the same thing in the next square over and the beds join into one, the way they look when you stand at the end of the row.
Pinch to zoom, drag corners to plant a bigger patch in one motion, and the gridlines stay on so it always reads like a plot.
Plate 04 · Weather and care
Open the app before the weather turns
When you open CarterGarden, it reads your local forecast against what you are growing and points out a freeze, a frost, heat, or high wind on the way, with the plants most at risk named first. Watering and seasonal care sit beside it, on a cadence you set.
Forecast from OpenWeather, read against your beds. Alerts and reminders show inside the app when you open it. Push notifications are on the roadmap, not in the app yet.
Plate 05 · On the way
Where CarterGarden is growing
The direction, not the current app. Nothing below is in the build yet.
Push notifications
Care reminders that reach you without opening the app.
Identify a plant
Point the camera at something growing and get a name to start from.
Tag scanning
Read a nursery tag and fill the plant in for you. Today the scanner is a demo.
A care library
Growing guides and seasonal calendars, per plant, honestly sourced.