Plant identification – guide to getting set up on GardenTags

Plant identification is one of the biggest challenges for growers of all abilities today and “Help me identify my plant” is one of the most common requests on the app.  To date plant identification on the app has been provided by our 100,000+ members and this has worked well with over 50,000 plants identified by our gardeners. A huge thanks to all those avid plant identifiers!

But we thought what if Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) could be used in tandem with our growing crowd to help solve the age old plant recognition problem.  What’s more, we thought what if we trained the A.I. using our 700,000+ gardener submitted photos and then linked it to our 20,000 plants in our wiki plant encyclopedia?  Well we’ve done it!  We’ve launched free plant recognition powered by the growing crowd and Artificial Intelligence or our little green robots as we like to call them.

Plant identification in action

If you have a plant growing in your garden or a flower that you spot on a country walk where you haven’t got a clue what it is GardenTags can now recognise the plant for free.  What’s more, because we have a plant encyclopedia of 20,000 plants you can find out what conditions the plant likes to grow in and if you add it to GardenTags you’ll get the growing task information* associated with it so you’ll know what to do and when

Here’s a quick start guide to get you up and running on GardenTags identifying plants, managing your garden and getting the most out of the growing community.

Getting started

To get started you will need to have a mobile or tablet device that runs either Android (Play store) or Apple iOS (the App Store) .

Step 1: Download the app and register

1. Using your mobile or tablet device follow this link to download the app

2. Once you’ve downloaded the app tap on the GardenTags icon and either log in via Facebook or ‘Register’ and follow the registration process and mini tutorial.

Step 2 – Plant identification – Take a photo or upload a photo of the plant you’d like to identify

Your GardenTags journey starts with adding your first photo either to get it identified and/or to start growing and sharing your plant collection in one place.  To do this tap on the ‘camera’ icon and follow the instructions. If you’re identifying your plant make sure you tap on ‘Plant’ option and follow the options.  When you get to the plant ID screen the artificial intelligence will try to match your plant.   You can tap each option it presents to take a look at other examples of the plant to help you find the best match. If you can’t find the plant in the list you can  also ask the community to identify the plant.  This will post the photo in-app for our community of over 100,000 growers to see if they can help you with your plant identification. Please make sure you check your notifications in the app to see who has responded.

By tapping on ‘Confirm choice’ you will be able to add the plant to your collection and publish it to the community. By adding it to your collection this will also link it to our encyclopedia which gives you access to all the planting information for that plant.  You will also get tasks alerts for your first 10 plants added for free as part of GardenTags Premium. If you don’t want to publish it to the community you can set you app profile as private by going to Profile> Edit Your Profile and switching the ‘App profile is private’ to the on position.

A simple way to identify your plant

Step 3: Follow other gardeners to get the most out of the app

GardenTags is a social network for people who have a shared passion for gardening.  To get the most out of GardenTags we recommend that you go to the Discover section to find gardeners to follow.  This will start to fill up your following feed with lots of inspiring plants.  If you tap on the ‘star’ this will add the plants you like to your wishlist so you can buy them at a later date.  If you tap on the plant name link you’ll be able to access the plant encyclopedia to find out how the plants like to grow and to see who else is growing them.

Further help videos…

Here are our handy ‘Getting started on GardenTags’ video guides which contain useful tips and advice on how to make the most out of GardenTags:

The following feed and wishlist explained.

Creating your profile page on GardenTags

Adding a photo of your first plant and understanding the plant task list

Viewing your notifications and replying to comments when someone mentions you

Discover new plants and gardeners.  Using the search and hashtags

Now you’re all set.  See you on the app www.gardentags.com/download 

If you do get stuck and would like some further guidance on the plant identification in the app or would just like some guidance setting up you can email us at hello@gardentags.com . If you’d like some advice on a specific plant simply post a photo of the plant and ask your question in the comments field making sure you add the hashtag #advice. If you want to do a retrospective plant identification after adding it to the app simply add #plantID to the comments below the plant photo and fingers crossed one of our gardeners will be able to help you out with the plant identification.

You may also want to check out our handy How To Garden videos.