Project Overview

The Garden Planner is a 'personal trainer' for the Australian Veggie Gardener

Organisation

The Garden Planner

Team

Paul Green - Concept and Design, Product Management
David Tiang - Development Lead (Bliss Media)
Eirian Chapman - Illustrations
Matt Watson - Project Management (Bliss Media)
Joel Thurston - Account Director (Bliss Media)

Project Brief

A gardeners boots are the best fertilizer. As she walks around her garden, she observes and notices what works and what doesn't.

The app is about the garden itself teaching people to learn, plan and manage their veggie patch.

Project Need

At the intersection of the Foodie movement, just left of the Food Security folks and way behind where our grandparents used to be, is a bunch of people who want to know where their food is coming from and who remember how good it used to taste. A strawberry that tastes like the colour red.

But they don't know where to start. When do you plant tomatoes? What is companion planting? How to I make sure that I don't have a glut? How often to I water and manure?

The Garden Planner answers all these questions by proving weekly reminders, a place to record your observations, and a timeline to see what will be ready to harvest when.

It probably isn't all that new, but together it is all new. It is garden book, a journal, a weather page, a gannt chart and a helper in a digital package.

User Experience

We deliberately choose a look and feel that was organic. It's a garden app . . .

First time users are given a tour as well as help videos.

If there is a problem, gardeners can email via a lady bug icon and we always respond inside 12 hours, typically less.

Project Marketing

Our two main groups of purchasers have been members of the Country Women's Association and the Hipster parent belt of capital cities.

This means our marketing strategy is twitter tips (good day to plant tomatoes) through to magazine ads and trade shows.

Gardeners are tactile people and love to talk about their garden and so getting out and talking to them has proved to be most successful.

Content marketing has been about demonstrating credibility because gardeners can spot a pest miles off. Weekly how-to and opinion articles are vital to walking the walk.