Botany Buddy

It has been a long time coming, much longer than this post, but we are starting to see the pieces of our online tools come to life.  I hearken back to the journey of creating the original iPhone app and remember the emotional roller coaster it was.  Despite all the memories relived and the stress of dealing with the developers and Apple, when it finally hit the store, it was like seeing a Magnolia bloom in spring oozing with pollen.  The people we have met as a result have been like the friends you make at a garden party or your trusted allies at the local nursery.  They have pollinated our flower and created the fruit that will produce that cluster of bright red seeds for the Cardinals to harvest and spread the flowers all around.

When we started the iPhone app and worked with the developer, we realized quickly that there was nothing natural about the technology at all, no matter how smooth they make the interface look.  We realized that to continue growing and for technology to work with nature it must act like nature, be built like nature and grow like nature.  The pieces and parts must be able to work together to grow the ecosystem as a whole.  Unfortunately since 1992, when the USDA started building the first database, technology for horticulture has been moving the wrong direction.  The medium has been used to store, organize, and dictate what nature is rather than grow the information like the plant kingdom, has grown itself.  As a result the information is fractured, isolated and has not been allowed to grow and become the knowledge it wants to become. 

We experienced the stifling complexities of this paradox before the iPhone app was ever complete, but were limited by the technology of the device.  As users started giving us feedback, we saw the limited use of the iPhone to ATT and the iPhone platform create the same separations as traditional horticulture information on other platforms.  Nature is made up of symbiotic relationships that are not limited by species let alone by the brand of your computer or phone, and we realized to meet the needs of gardeners, growers, and the horticulture industry as a whole we had use the whole world as our ecosystem, just like nature does.  So just as we ran from the USDA and turned to Linnaeus as the inspiration for our data structure, we have moved from the native applications to a web based platform that can grow as freely as the Internet has itself.

Gardens are about growing… plants, places, people, minds, and relationships.  For growth to happen you have to learn, which requires listening, communicating, adapting, and experiencing.  Using data structures and technological devices that prevent and stifle this growth, have kept the entire industry from being able to grow technologically as well as the plants in their gardens grow themselves.  When it comes to reference sources for horticulture, rather than treating them as a growing medium, technology has acted more like a pre emergent or pair of pruners to control the growth of information.  In the end it has prevented or limited the experiential activities necessary to grow and has turned gardening on the web to a collection on limitless libraries and opinions.  Other than prolific and wonderful discussions in social media little has been done to grow the industry as a whole through the use of the information.

Some who will read this have seen what we are up to in our cyber-greenhouse, and have watched us toiling in the soil, and even seen some of the seeds germinate.  Finally the seeds have all germinated, their roots are reaching the edge of the pots and are ready to be potted up.  Like those first liners going to the wholesale market, that is who we have been working with first to bring this to market, and for some of those larger nurseries who do it all, we are planting our flowers in their greenhouses as well.  Soon it will be spreading nation, continent and world-wide just like those seeds on the Magnolia.

Like nature itself, the technology is proving that it can grow symbiotically with all these different groups regardless of their individual environments and species.  It is working, just like all of those original experiments that came from Linnaeus and those little bitty peas.  It is working because instead of fighting and controlling nature we worked with it, embraced it and emulated it.  We are able to grow all of these different tools for all these different people, because like nature we have one life force driving everything we do for everyone in our garden, and have used nature’s structural models to make it all work together.

We are not ready to release our individual or education tools yet, if you sign up for news on our main site we will keep you posted.  If you are in the nursery or landscape industry and looking for ways to better communicate with, or education your clients, staff, and end users feel free to contact us, and I’ll gladly give you a tour or the cyber-greenhouse and show you what we are growing for you.