Anyone who owns plants knows that setting up the right environment for their green treasures to thrive in is a delicate balancing act. Some may be perfectly happy in a bright living room, while others will be at home in a darker bathroom. And then there’s the watering: How much? How often?

With Planta, taking care of your greenery is infinitely easier. Snap a photo of your plant and the app provides individual care tips, so you know when to water it and what else to look out for.

We talked to Jesper Svensson, CEO of Planta, about why Scandinavia is a good place to develop a plant-care app, how he and his team tailor the app’s features for users around the world, and why now more than ever people are so invested in caring for their plants.

“We developed Planta mainly to save our own plants,” Svensson tells us. After all, those long, dark winters in Scandinavia are a huge challenge for plant lovers. When they were developing the app’s algorithm, which gives the right advice on how to care for individual plant types, Svensson and his team used their own plants in the testing phase.

Svensson now keeps around 30 plants in his home, but will he be able to prevent any of them from dying? “No, but there’s a higher probability that they’ll survive the winter,” he adds with a laugh.

Over time, the team has noticed that it’s not only a plant’s location within a home that matters, but that there are global differences to consider as well.

“When a friend moved from Stockholm to the west coast of the US, we realized that the needs are very different,” Svensson says. Different climate zones demand different care regimes, and that’s where Planta’s users have proven to be particularly knowledgable and influential.

For example, it was feedback from users that led to the development of the light meter, which determines the needs of a plant based on the light conditions of its location. Planta can also take into account things like whether there’s an air conditioning unit nearby or if the plant is near a window—the more precisely you can determine the conditions, the more reliable the app’s tips will be.

When the pandemic arrived in 2020 and life at home became the norm, Planta struck a chord with many people who began paying more attention to or started expanding their collection of house plants. This sudden jump in popularity meant that the still relatively new app finally started flourishing.

That’s been satisfying for Svensson, but even more so has been seeing how users have become so much more involved in their plants’ lives. “People’s interest in plants grows the more often they use Planta,” he says.

If you’re already a proud plant parent, or just starting your journey, Planta will teach you everything you need to know—even how to ensure they survive a cold, dark winter.

Planta: Complete Plant Care

Water tracker & Light Meter

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