Photos to plants
Live · This works today.
Photos to plants takes a batch of photos and turns them into plants in your garden. Add them all at once from your camera roll, or take one there and then. If you photograph a nursery tag and then the tree right after it, we pair those two on the order you shot them in — that pairing comes first, ahead of any guess from the picture. A tag's own text is read into a crop, a variety, a size class and who grew it, and the tag wins over the picture when the two disagree. To fix a pairing yourself, tap one card, tap another, then tap the Same plant button that appears. Tap a plant's own name to search our plant database and set its crop and variety by hand. Past eight plants the cards become a list. Pick where they are growing from your own beds and pots, grouped by zone. Nothing is written until you tap a card that lists every plant it is about to make.
Adding a pile of photos
Open Photos to plants from the menu. Two ways in:
- Add photos — pick as many as you like from your camera roll at once.
- Take one now — opens the camera.
Each picture is read as it arrives, which takes a moment each. Nothing is saved at this stage.
What you get back
A card for each plant we think you have, showing its pictures, the crop where we could name it — a tag’s own reading first, the picture’s guess as the fallback — and any variety, size and grower we read off a nursery label. Past eight plants, the cards become a list instead of a grid, one row each. Tap a plant’s name to search our plant database and set the crop and variety yourself.
Combine two plants by tapping one card and then another, then tapping the Same plant button that appears. Dragging one card onto the other still works too. Pull a photo back out with the Not the same plant button.
When it looks right, pick where they are growing from your own beds and pots — grouped by zone so two spots sharing a name are never confused — or leave it for later, then tap the button. It tells you how many plants and photos it made, and offers you the way to your garden.
What it will not do
It will not decide that two pictures show the same plant when the evidence does not settle it — a card you have to join is two taps, where a wrong merge is a plant you never find out you lost. It will only pair a tag with the photo immediately next to it in the order you shot them, never further than that. It will not make a plant from a photo that is not of a plant. It will not take photos from a previous season. And it will not guess a crop when several would fit; it says so instead.
Common questions
- How does it decide which photos are the same plant?
Three ways, in order, and none of them is asking the AI whether two pictures show the same plant.
First, the order you shot them in. If a photo reads as a tag and the very next one does not, those two are one plant — that is how most people photograph a nursery tree, tag then tree, and it needs no clock and no crop guess to work.
Second, a nursery label. If a label is readable in two pictures and the words match, they are the same plant, whatever the clock says.
Third, if neither of the above applies, we use the clock: photos taken within a minute of each other, of the same crop, are treated as one plant. A whole group has to fit inside that same minute, not a minute per step, so walking down a row taking a picture every twenty seconds gives you separate plants rather than one enormous one.
Everything else is left apart for you to join. We would rather show you two cards for one plant — which you can see and fix with two taps — than quietly merge two of your apple trees into one record, which you would never go looking for.
- It shot a labeled tree and it still did not pair with the tag. Why not?
Because the tag was not the photo right before it. Tag-then-tree pairing only ever looks at the photo immediately in front of and behind a tag in the order you shot them — two trees in a row after one tag, or a tree photographed before any tag exists, are both left apart on purpose. Chaining further than that is exactly how a wrong merge happens, and a wrong merge is the mistake nobody ever goes back and finds. A card you have to join yourself costs two taps; a plant folded silently into the wrong record costs you the record.
- What does it read off a nursery tag?
Four things: the crop, the variety, a size class, and who grew it. A tag reading Mormon Apricot, semi dwarf, grown by a nursery becomes a plant named Mormon Apricot, not just Apricot. The size class — dwarf, semi-dwarf or standard — is saved as the plant's rootstock when its crop can actually be grafted, the same fact the plant page already uses for spacing and sucker advice. The grower has no field of its own, so it goes into the plant's first note instead, marked as coming from the tag. A canning or batch code printed on the tag is never kept — it is not a fact about the plant.
- It named a plant wrong. Can I fix it?
Yes — tap the plant's own name. That opens a search over the same plant database the Garden Planner uses, so you can pick the right crop and variety by hand. It sets the name, and clears the "no calendar yet" chip if the crop you pick is one we hold a calendar for.
- How do I combine two cards, or split one?
Tap one card, then tap another — a visible Same plant button appears, and that is what joins them. Past eight plants the cards become a list, one row each, so a big pile stays scannable with a thumb instead of a small grid.
Dragging one card onto another still works if you would rather, but it is no longer what the screen tells you to do.
A card holding more than one photo has a Not the same plant button, which pulls the most recently added photo back out into a plant of its own. Press it again to keep pulling photos out one at a time.
- What happens to photos of things that are not plants?
They are shown to you and simply not turned into plants. A seed packet, a tool, a finished dinner — those are real pictures worth keeping, they are just not a plant growing in your garden, and inventing a plant record from one would be making something up. A tag photographed with no tree next to it in the sequence falls in here too, rather than being guessed onto the wrong plant.
- It said it could not name one of my plants. Is that a failure?
Usually not — often it is the honest answer.
A readable tag's own crop word is tried first, ahead of anything the picture alone guessed. When there is no tag, or the tag names a crop we do not carry, we say so rather than picking one. For example, if the reading comes back as corn, we hold three things that could be: sweet corn, cornflower, and corn salad. There is no single right pick, so we record what was read and mark the plant as one we do not hold a calendar for, rather than guessing.
A plant marked this way still keeps its photos and still lives in your garden. It just will not get planting dates or job reminders until it is matched to a crop we hold.
- Can I use this for photos from previous years?
No, and it will tell you when it skips one. This screen makes plants that are growing in your garden now, so a photo taken in an earlier season is left out — turning a 2019 tomato into a plant you own today would put it on your daily list.
- Where do the plants end up?
Wherever you pick from your own list of beds and pots, grouped under their zone. Two spots that happen to share a name — two beds both called "the orchard" — show as separate buttons, each naming its own zone, so you are never guessing which one you tapped. Somewhere new opens a name field and makes a fresh spot; Decide later leaves it unsorted and you can move it in the usual way afterward.
- Does anything get saved before I approve it?
No. Reading the photos happens as soon as you add them, but nothing is written into your garden until you tap the button at the bottom, which says how many plants it will make. The list above it is the check: every row already shows the name it will get, what it read and how sure it is, so you can merge, split or rename rows first.
Shipped 2026-09-15. Last checked 2026-10-07. Something here wrong or out of date? Tell us — support docs going stale is a bug.