This page answers the questions guardians ask most often. If yours is not here, write to us — the addresses are at the bottom and a person reads them.
A specimen is one individual plant in your care — not a species. Two monsteras in different rooms are two specimens, because they live in different light, dry out at different rates, and need different answers.
You do not need a sensor, and you do not need to photograph anything to begin. A specimen with a species, a zone and a care log already gets a working model.
Each specimen carries a Digital Shadow: a running model of that individual plant's water, light and nutrient state. It recomputes every night, and re-projects live when you change something — so you can move a slider and watch the projection shift before you act.
The Shadow estimates. It is not a measurement, and it does not pretend to be. When a real sensor reading arrives it overrides the estimate, because measurement beats forecast. Without a sensor the model runs on your species, your zone, your logged care and your local weather — which is enough for most homes, and honest about being an estimate.
This is why the app rarely says "water every 7 days". A fixed schedule is a guess about a species; the Shadow is a guess about your plant, corrected every time you tell it something true.
Two features read photographs, and both spend from the same monthly allowance:
The capture screen coaches your framing before it spends anything: it works offline, and a scan is only spent once the frame is good enough to be worth reading. If the Doctor finds nothing wrong, that is a valid answer and you still see it.
A progress photograph goes to the Doctor as well. Logging one saves the frame to the specimen's gallery and feeds the growth timeline — height, leaf count and vitality plotted over time — and then runs a diagnosis on that same frame, which spends a photo read like any other. That is the point rather than an accident: the scheduled photograph is how the model keeps re-calibrating against your actual plant instead of drifting on its own estimates.
So two separate limits apply to a progress photograph: your plan's per-specimen photo allowance (12 per specimen per year on Observer, 24 on Cultivator, 52 on Conservancy), and the monthly photo-read allowance the diagnosis spends. Reaching either one leaves the other untouched — and a photograph is still saved to the gallery when the reads are gone, it just goes undiagnosed.
How often a specimen asks for one is set per species, between 7 and 30 days, from how fast it grows. Observer's twelve a year covers the slowest of those — a monthly photograph — so a specimen on a 30-day interval can always keep its schedule. A fast-growing plant that asks weekly will outrun it, which is what the larger allowances on the paid tiers are for.
Observer is free forever and keeps 5 specimens in active management, each with its own nightly Digital Shadow, the daily Sanctuary Brief, care reminders, propagation tools and full data export.
| Plan | Price | Specimens | Photo reads / month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Observer | Free | 5 | 3 |
| Cultivator | €6.99 / mo · €49.99 / yr | 50 | 120 |
| Conservancy | €14.99 / mo · €116.99 / yr | 150 | 360 |
"Photo reads" is ONE allowance shared between identification and the Doctor — not one each. A month in which you identify two new plants and ask the Doctor once has spent three.
Every new account gets a trial with no card asked for: 14 days on Cultivator, 7 on Conservancy. Nothing charges when it ends — the account simply reverts to Observer, your specimens and their whole history stay in your Sanctuary, and anything past the 5-specimen ceiling sits in archive until you subscribe.
The trial starts when you confirm your email address, not when you sign up. If you never got that mail, see Common problems below.
The daily Sanctuary Brief is one message a day summarising what needs you. Individual care reminders fire when a specimen's Shadow says it is due, not on a fixed calendar.
Weather-aware frost and heat alerts warn you about outdoor specimens before the temperature reaches them. A meaningful rainfall can auto-log a watering for opted-in outdoor plants, so you are not credited for rain you did not provide, nor nagged to water something the sky already watered.
Away mode silences routine watering, feeding and photo reminders for a dated window, while health and weather alerts keep firing — the ones you would still want to know about from elsewhere. It also builds a pre-departure care plan and a sitter sheet you can share or print, and it expires on your return date without you having to remember to switch it off.
Soil-moisture, temperature and humidity sensors connect through Home Assistant. Bind a device to a specimen or to a zone, and its readings anchor the model: a fresh reading overrides the estimate, and a moisture spike can auto-log a watering.
Sensors are an anchor, not a requirement — nothing is gated behind owning one. Direct pairing with a standalone soil probe, without Home Assistant in between, is on the roadmap and not something you can use today.
You can export everything, on every plan including the free one. The archive contains every photograph, every sensor reading, every care event and the full Digital Shadow history as raw JSON, plus your growth curves as a CSV you can open in a spreadsheet.
Archiving a specimen is reversible: it leaves active management but keeps its history, and it is recoverable for 30 days. Deleting your account is not reversible.
What we collect and why, who processes it, and how to exercise your GDPR rights are all in the Privacy Policy. Requests to exercise those rights go to the privacy address below and are answered within one month, as GDPR Art. 12(3) requires.
Mail arrives from no-reply@botanicallegacy.com — note the hyphen. Check your spam folder, and search for that exact address. If nothing has arrived after a few minutes, request it again; if it still does not arrive, write to us and say which address you signed up with.
A clean bill of health is a real diagnosis and does spend a read — the model looked. What should never happen is an error after the read is spent; if you see one, tell us what you photographed.
The Shadow decays nightly between care events, which is the point — it models a plant getting thirstier while you are not looking. Log the care you actually did and it will correct. If the number looks wrong rather than merely low, the fastest fix is a fresh photo, which re-calibrates the specimen.
Archive a specimen you are no longer actively tending — its history is kept — or move to a plan with a higher ceiling. Nothing is deleted when you reach the limit.
Edit the species on the specimen by hand; the care profile follows the corrected name, and no further read is spent. A photograph taken close, in even light, against an uncluttered background identifies far more reliably than a whole-room shot.
There is a feedback form in the app under Guardian → Feedback, which carries diagnostic detail with it and is the fastest route for a bug. Otherwise, by email: