Social network for gardeners offers smart plotting tools and community feedback

Greenius wants to inject a social aspect to gardening, enabling users to easily share their green-fingered exploits and receive advice from like-minded gardeners and farmers.

Despite the majority of the world now living in urban environments, gardening remains a popular pursuit whether it’s in people’s gardens or on tower block balconies. And technology is no stranger to the field — in the past we’ve seen Israel’s Greenbox app offer smart recommendations and automate garden tasks. Now Greenius wants to inject a social aspect to gardening, enabling users to easily share their green-fingered exploits and receive advice from like-minded gardeners and farmers.

Members can first begin by setting up their digital plot — a grid which represents their garden. Each square of the grid can be filled with the different plants and flowers growing in whatever space they’re using. Greenius automatically links members with others who are growing the same plants. Users can also keep a public journal of their gardening activity, using hashtags to mark the gardening terms they’re discussing (eg. #carrots, #organic or #urbangardening). This creates feeds of discussion around similar topics so users can easily find out what others are saying about the plants and gardening techniques they’re interested in. Community gardens and farmers can also join in to offer expert advice and encouragement to beginners.

Greenius turns gardening from a solitary pasttime to a social activity with tools that can help gardeners improve and get feedback on the plants they’re growing. Are there other hobbies and specialist activities that could be improved with their own social network?