Provenance

The Knowing Garden is a garden planner that starts from a different place: tell it what you want to grow, and it figures out where to put everything.

Most garden planning tools are drawing programs with a plant database attached. You drag squares around a grid until your beds look full, print it out, and tape it to the fridge. That's not planning — that's data entry.

Real garden planning is a conversation. It starts with what you want to eat, then works backwards through what grows in your zone, what you planted last year and where, what plays well together, and what the frost dates allow. The Knowing Garden is built around that idea.

How it works

You tell the planner what you want to grow. It assigns crops to your beds — respecting spacing, companion planting, crop rotation, and your local frost dates. It learns from each season, building a history of what worked and what didn't.

Who's building this

The Knowing Garden is a Heartbred project, built in Crossfield, Alberta — zone 4a, where the last frost can come as late as May 21 and the growing season is about 151 days. Every feature is tested against real conditions.

Follow the build in Field Notes.