Getting Started With GrowHaus: Using Our Plant Features & Tools

There's plenty to explore across GrowHaus, but we also want it to be somewhere that helps you do something with the ideas you find. Maybe you're trying to work out which plant could suit a particular corner of your home. Perhaps you've discovered a few plants you like and want somewhere to save them, so you can remember their names when you're ready to look for one or simply come back and learn more later. Or maybe you've already got plants around the house and would quite like an easier way to keep track of them. That's where the GrowHaus features come in. We've started with a few simple tools and features for discovering plants, saving the ones that interest you and keeping track of the plants you're growing at home, with more planned as GrowHaus develops.

Choosing a houseplant often starts the wrong way around. You see a plant you like, take it home and then try to work out whether the place you've chosen for it has enough light, the right temperature or anything remotely resembling the conditions it prefers. Plant Finder starts with your space instead. Tell it about things such as the light available, the room conditions and what you're looking for, and it can suggest plants that may be a good match. The results aren't intended to replace plant-care advice or guarantee that a plant will thrive. Homes have plenty of variables that a tool can't completely measure. Instead, think of Plant Finder as a way to narrow down the possibilities and discover plants you might not have considered.

Not every visit to GrowHaus needs to start with knowing exactly what you're looking for. Something Different is designed for those moments when you simply want to discover a plant you might not have come across before. Rather than searching through familiar favourites, it gives you another way into the GrowHaus plant collection and a chance to find something a little less obvious. You might discover a plant with unusual foliage, an interesting way of growing or simply something you wouldn't normally have thought to search for. And if something catches your attention, you can save it to your account and come back to it later.

Sometimes you come across a plant you like and want somewhere to keep its name for later. When you're signed into Spacelo, Saved Plants gives you a place to keep plants that have caught your attention. You might want to look for one elsewhere in the future, compare a few possibilities for a particular room or simply come back and read about it again later. Your saved plants are kept together in My Spacelo, so you don't have to rely on remembering the name of that plant you saw three weeks ago with “the green leaves with the interesting pattern.” If you eventually add one of those plants to your home, you can then add it to My Plants and start keeping your own record of it.

Once a plant makes it home, My Plants gives you a place to keep track of it. You can find it inside My Spacelo, where you can create a record for each individual plant you're looking after. That becomes particularly useful as your collection grows. You might own two of the same species in completely different parts of your home, and they won't necessarily behave in exactly the same way. Each plant can also have its own plant diary, giving you somewhere to record updates as it grows. You can note new growth, changes in condition or things you've done differently, building up a simple history of the plant over time. That can be useful when something changes. If a plant suddenly starts doing particularly well — or suddenly doesn't — looking back at previous updates might help you work out what you've been doing differently. It's also quite satisfying to look back and realise that the tiny new leaf you recorded a few months ago isn't quite so tiny anymore.

The different GrowHaus features are designed to work together rather than exist as completely separate tools. You might use Plant Finder to discover something suited to your space, stumble across something unexpected through Something Different, save a few plants that catch your attention and eventually add one to My Plants if it becomes part of your home. From there, you can build up a diary as it grows. You don't have to use every feature, though. Use the parts that are useful for the way you grow. As GrowHaus develops, we'd like to build more tools around the questions and problems that come with growing at home — whether that's choosing something suitable, understanding what's happening to a plant or simply keeping track of everything you've somehow ended up owning. Because one plant does have a habit of becoming several.