GardenCraft AR & Care

Draw the garden.
See it in ten years.

A landscape planner that treats a garden as what it is — something that grows for decades, costs real money, and needs looking after every month of the year. Not a picture you drop a tree onto.

Drag the two sliders. That is the actual product, running here.

Status In development · offline-first · iOS & Android

Time Machinenow

Sun · 21 June12:00

Plate 01 · why

A garden is not a picture.

Every "try it on" app lets you drop a tree onto a photo. None of them can tell you that the tree will shade your vegetable bed in six years, what the hardcore under your path will cost, or when to wrap the roses.

01 · TIME

Plants grow

So the plan has to be readable at any year ahead, and in any season. The year slider is the main decision-making instrument, not a garnish.

02 · MONEY

Metres cost money

Every metre of path drawn becomes a line in the estimate. The plan and the estimate are two views of the same data, not two documents to reconcile.

03 · CONSEQUENCE

Decisions have a bill

Zone 6 plant on a zone 4 site. Willow five metres from the septic tank. The app says so while you can still move it.

Plate 02 · what it does

Four things, one set of data.

A change on the plan reaches the 3D scene, the estimate and next spring's task list within the same frame. Nothing is entered twice.

Draw

The plan

Survey the plot three ways — sides, diagonals, or traced over a scan
Paths drawn as a centreline become polygons
Twelve layers, snapping, exact numeric entry
80 steps of undo, every one of them named

See

Time and light

Years 0 to 20 — planting grows along a saturation curve
Twelve months — foliage, flower, autumn colour, bare winter
Real shadows from buildings, fences and crowns
AR at 1:1 on your own plot, or a model on the table

Cost

The estimate

Quantities taken off the geometry, not typed
Every figure opens into its formula
Economy, Standard, Premium — swapped in one transaction
Your prices; the bundled list is an empty template

Care

The year after

Tasks generated from each plant and your frost dates
One morning line, never more than two a day
Photo points that line up last year's frame
No streaks to lose, no shame for a skipped task

Plate 03 · the two engines

Both of them are arithmetic.

No model, no service, no network. The two features the product is built on are a growth curve and a solar position formula, and they run on the device.

Growth

H(t) = H₀ + (H∞ − H₀)(1 − e^−kt) W(t) = W∞ (1 − e^−kt) k = 0.25 fast 0.15 medium 0.08 slow

A saturation curve, not a straight line: a sapling gains its first metres quickly and then creeps towards its mature size. Trimming caps the height; poor conditions slow k down.

Norway maple, year 10: crown ≈ 6.2 m
Thuja hedge, 0.6 m apart: closes in year 5

Sun

sin h = sin φ sin δ + cos φ cos δ cos H L = height / tan(h) direction = azimuth + 180°

Declination from the day of the year, then altitude and azimuth. Accurate to about a degree — far more than a garden needs. Local solar time, because a time zone never changed the shape of a shadow.

London, 21 June, noon: altitude 62°
Same day, 05:45: altitude 16°, azimuth 72°

Plate 04 · the checks

It warns. It never forbids.

Thirty rules watch the plan and say what will happen. Every one can be switched off, and switched-off rules stay listed so you remember you did it.

✕ This plant will not survive your winter Species is hardy to zone 6; the site is zone 4. zone.hardiness

⚠ These two crowns close in year 8 Spacing 2.8 m; mature crowns 6 m each. space.crownOverlap

⚠ Roots this aggressive, five metres from a foundation Willow, poplar, box elder and bamboo lift what they reach. root.foundation

i These beds get 4.2 hours of sun Tomatoes want six or more. light.vegBed

Checks are advisory and do not replace a horticulturist or a design engineer. Statutory setbacks are editable, because they differ everywhere.

Plate 05 · running today

Photographed, not mocked up.

Straight off an iPhone 16 Pro simulator on a clean install.

The 2D planner showing a demo garden with house, paths, lawn, pond and planting — **The planner**Boundary, hedge, terrace, path, pond, planting, north arrow, scale bar.

The same garden fourteen years later, crowns much larger — **+14 years**The maple has covered the terrace; the hydrangeas have closed up.

The same plan with long shadows cast at 06:30 in June — **Sun and shade**06:30, altitude 23°, azimuth 80° — shadows fall south-west.

The project list in the Evening Garden dark theme — **Evening Garden**The dark theme is designed, not inverted.

Plate 06 · the offline promise

Nothing leaves the phone.

Not a design preference — an architectural rule. The build contains no package capable of a network request, and the plant catalogue, climate data and rules all ship inside it.

0network calls, under any circumstances

0accounts, logins or email addresses

0adverts, energy timers or paid hints

320+plants bundled in the build, not fetched

Plate 07 · privacy & security

The policy is short, because there is nothing to collect.

Most privacy policies are long because the product sends data somewhere. This one does not, and the architecture is what makes that true rather than a promise: the build contains no package capable of a network request.

01What is collected

Nothing. There is no account, no sign-in, no email address, no device identifier, no analytics, no crash reporting that phones home and no advertising SDK. There is no server to send anything to.

02Where your work lives

Projects, plans, estimates, care tasks and any photos you attach are written to the app's private storage on your device. They are not copied anywhere. Deleting the app deletes them with it.

03Network access

The plant catalogue, climate data, statutory setbacks, agronomic rules and 3D assets all ship inside the binary. The app makes no network calls under any circumstances — including for updates to that content, which arrive only with a new version of the app.

04Permissions, and why

Camera — only for AR and for photos you choose to take. Frames are never stored or transmitted outside the project you put them in.
Photos and files — only when you pick an underlay or attach an image.
Notifications — only if you turn reminders on. They are scheduled on the device; no push service is involved.
Location is never requested. Your region comes from a list bundled in the app, and you can override the latitude by hand.

No permission is asked for at launch. Each request is preceded by an explanation, and refusing any of them never blocks the app as a whole.

05Sharing is always your action

Exporting a plan, an estimate or a backup goes through the system share sheet after you ask for it. Where the file then travels is decided by you and by the app you hand it to.

06Security on the device

Optional app lock using the device's own biometrics or passcode. The app never stores a password of its own.
Privacy mode masks every monetary figure for showing a screen to someone else.
Writes are atomic — temporary file, flush, rename — so a project cannot be corrupted by the app being killed mid-save.
Automatic snapshots are taken before any destructive operation, and the last three are restorable.

07Children

There are no accounts, no chat, no content shared between users, no advertising and no purchases. Nothing a child enters can reach anyone else, because nothing leaves the device.

08What this app is not

It does not produce construction documentation, structural calculations or a valuation, and it does not replace a horticulturist or a design engineer. Growth figures, shade maps and rule warnings are indicative and labelled as such. Statutory setbacks differ by region and must be checked against local rules.

If this ever changes. Cloud sync and shared household projects are listed as possible future work. Should any of it arrive, it will be opt-in, off by default, described in the release notes, and this page will be updated with a new date — never enabled quietly in an update.

A contact address for privacy questions will be published here with the first store release.

Last updated 22 August 2026 · applies to GardenCraft AR & Care, all versions to date

Plate 08 · honest status

What actually runs.

This is a product under construction and the page says so rather than showing store badges that go nowhere. The specification runs to 108 sections; here is where the code has got to.

Area	State
Geometry, solar, growth, money, units — with tests	built
BOTANICAL BLUEPRINT theme, light and dark	built
Project list, survey wizard, demo garden	built
2D planner, layers, undo, autosave	built
Time Machine, sun and shade	built
Plant catalogue and selection	next
Take-off and estimating	next
Care calendar and reminders	next
3D scene and AR	later
Agronomic validator, PDF export	later

Draw the garden.See it in ten years.