May 23, 2023

🌱✌️New Garden Planner and Data Party

Hey Permapeople,

It’s time we’re sending another newsletter since we’re having something super cool to share: We created a completely new visual garden planner! And by we, we actually mean Han, who was doing all the hard work.

And on that note, if we haven’t already formally introduced Han, he is a self-described “land-race rebel” and has been a welcome addition to the team since quite some time, sharing his data quality and development knowledge. Find him on Permapeople, Twitter or Bluesky.

New garden planner

We started with the first version of the planner quite some time ago but felt that it never really felt good enough to do serious garden planning. Then we were dreaming, what if we rewrite it with a focus on more flexible grid, plant sizes and placing. Han took it on and built it from start to finish. It is still in its early phase, but we want to share it with you already to get feedback.

Please give it a spin and let us know what you think. We have a lot of features planned in the future already and hope this will help you designing your garden in a more simple way.

Open the planner

Data party

One of the things we saw, that we need with the new visual planner, was to get sizing/spacing data on all the plants. This is where we need your help!

We've compiled a spreadsheet with all the plants commonly used in garden planners (legacy and new) and we're inviting you to join the data party! We need your help to adopt a plant from the list, edit it, and set a “Width” in m — the unit should just be a number - no need to add the unit if its a perennial plant. If its an annual plant, please add the “Spacing” attribute. You can use decimal points where needed. Then save it! If anyone can commit to even 1 or 2 plants that would be a huge help!

You can find all the plants here.

Data Acknowledgement and Other Policies

The data and knowledge we share on Permapeople, is meant to be of, by and for the people.

We have received so many API access requests in the last few months that we felt it was important to remind ourselves and our community why we’re doing this in the first place.

Read our Data Acknowledgement and Privacy Policy pages or sign up for an API key here.

From the community

From the very start, Permapeople is all about giving people a platform to show their awesome projects and we wanted to show you two cool people from the community doing awesome things.

Bobby aka Small Scale Permaculture

Bobby’s Youtube channel gets updated frequently with tons of updates from his garden, but also many practical tips on how to actually do things. It is one of our fav channels, since the information density is high and you don’t need to watch long into video until you learn something new.

Small Scale Permaculture

Thulahn aka Food Forest Adventurer

I know most of you have very limited space and feel like its holding you back from growing a food garden. You should start following Thulan’s adventures into running a micro agroforesty. Plus you get introduced to breeding experiments and not so common useful plants.

Food Forest Adventurer

As always, we read and respond to every email, so please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions or feedback you may have.

Happy planning/planting 🌱✌️,

Ben and the Permapeople team