Gardener’s Buddy – the map-based iPad iDiary for the earnest gardener.

Break the forgotten bulb cycle! Be able to name that flower from Tibet you planted last year! Add a colour note for that ‘white’ rose that turned out to be purple! Note where you bought the apricot tree that turned out to be a gooseberry bush! Use the brand new “Gardener’s Buddy” map-based app for iPad to keep track of all those things about plants you need to remember.

Gardener’s Buddy uses spatial architecture to allow you to ‘plant’ on a virtual map of your very own garden. First step is to upload a base sketch jpg of your garden. It can be professional or just a sketch of the boundaries. Gardener’s Buddy will then generate 25 months’ worth of maps. When you tap on a monthly map the screen will expand to fit your base map. It is to this map you add Planting Markers. You can add plantings in one of seven layers, each with its own distinctive icon: trees, bushes, bulbs, perennials, annuals, herbs, and vegetables. Your planting has a tag and a description box to type in all of that data on the plastic plant tag that invariably gets lost.

While the maps are divided up into months, you can add as many times as you want per month. Plus, you can export your plantings via e-mail or syncing in a simple database file that you can keep in a safe computer in case your iPad vanishes. Export as often as you want when in a given month – only that month’s worth of comments will appear in the exported file. What’s more, the app will age (change months) with you and your garden, so you are always current, and you have two years’ worth of months to look back upon, not including the records you e-mail to yourself.

This app is truly your ‘Buddy’. When you are finished planting for the day, make an inspection tour of all the tags and you will have your recording done, ready for updating whenever you want to note a change. And the review function allows you to take the garden inside with you at night or through the long winter. The First Law of Gardening states that it is impossible for a gardener to walk from one side of the garden to the other, so why not take your Gardener’s Buddy along for the journey!