v2.8 — Self-hosted garden management for any climate.
Plan, plant, and maintain your garden with smart automation, AI-powered health monitoring, beautiful visualizations, and community co-op features. Runs on a Raspberry Pi.
- Property map editor — sun tracking, shadow calculations, drag-and-drop placement
- Planter grids — raised beds, vertical planters, containers, freeform layouts
- Seed tray tracking — cell-level management with germination and transplant tracking
- Ground plants — trees, vines, shrubs with dedicated detail pages
- Area organization — group plants by location, auto-assign from map position
- 273+ plants with companion planting data and desert/climate ratings
- 354 varieties with cultivar-specific growing information
- 1,156 companion relationships — know what grows well together
- AI photo analysis — GPT-4o vision identifies plants and diagnoses health issues
- Plant health monitoring — batch photo analysis with automatic alerts
- Smart task generation — 10 watering rules factoring soil, sun, container, season, and weather forecast
- Weather-aware scheduling — multi-day forecast checks, heat wave prep, frost protection, wind adjustments
- Lifecycle planner — seed-to-harvest waterfall with cascading task dependencies
- Garden bed templates — one-click planting plans (Salsa Garden, Three Sisters, Pizza Garden, Herb Garden, Pollinator, Desert Salad Bowl)
- Monthly calendar with zone-appropriate planting windows
- iCal subscription feeds — 5 event types, subscribe from any calendar app
- Multiple weather providers — Tempest WeatherFlow, Open-Meteo (free), OpenWeatherMap, NWS
- Home Assistant integration — map any HA sensor entity to a role (temperature, humidity, soil moisture, etc.)
- Rachio smart irrigation — controller zones and hose timer valve support, water usage tracking
- 7-day forecast on the dashboard with weather-emoji icons
- Frost alerts — auto-generates protection tasks when temps drop below 40°F
- Harvest tracking with upcoming harvest countdown and yield analytics
- Plant health monitoring — scheduled GPT-4o photo analysis with health status dashboard
- Journal AI summaries — weekly/monthly garden recaps summarizing activity, harvests, and tasks
- Photo analysis — snap a photo, get plant ID, health assessment, and care recommendations
- Session-based auth with Argon2id password hashing
- Invite code registration — admins generate codes, users sign up
- Role-based access — admin, user, viewer
- Shared garden — everyone collaborates on the same garden with user attribution
- Audit logging — who changed what and when
- Connect multiple GG instances — link your garden with neighbors, community plots, or co-op members
- Harvest surplus sharing — see what's available nearby, offer your own surplus from the Harvest page
- Community Seed Swaps — browse swap offers on the Seeds page; banners appear automatically when you have more than 5 of a seed
- Pest alerts — broadcast pest sightings to your co-op; receive community alerts on the Pests page
- Co-op feed (
/coop) — unified activity timeline showing all peer activity - Dashboard widget — CoopSummaryWidget shows peer count, active alerts, surplus, and seed swaps at a glance
- Peer management — add/remove peers inline in Settings → Community
- Off-grid co-op messaging via LoRa radio mesh — no internet required between nodes
- TCP connection to your Meshtastic node's hostname or IP (port 4403)
- Configure in Settings → Meshtastic
- Recommended: create a channel called
gardeningon your node, then set the channel index in Settings
- 4 channels: Email (SMTP), Discord (webhook), Web Push (PWA), Pushbullet
- Per-user preferences — event type × channel matrix
- 6 event types: task due, task overdue, harvest ready, frost warning, plant health alert, invite accepted
- Docker Compose — runs on Raspberry Pi 4/5, any Linux server, or cloud VM
- SQLite with 38 numbered migrations (safe, never re-run)
- Hourly backups with 14-day retention + pre-deploy snapshots
- Auto-update system — pull from GitHub, configurable schedule, web UI control
- PWA support — install on iOS/Android home screen
- Onboarding wizard — guided first-time setup
- Configurable integrations — no hardcoded API keys, everything from the admin UI
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Frontend | Next.js 14, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript |
| Backend | Python FastAPI, SQLite |
| Auth | Session cookies, Argon2id |
| AI | OpenAI GPT-4o / GPT-4o-mini |
| Deployment | Docker Compose |
git clone https://github.com/rancur/garden-godmother.git
cd garden-godmother
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up -d --buildVisit http://localhost:3400 — the onboarding wizard will guide you through setup.
Default admin credentials are logged on first startup — check docker logs garden-api.
After starting the app, go to Settings > Integrations to connect your services:
| Integration | What it does | API key needed? |
|---|---|---|
| Rachio Controller | Smart irrigation zones | Yes (from rachio.com) |
| Rachio Hose Timer | Smart hose timer valves | Uses Rachio key |
| Tempest WeatherFlow | Personal weather station data | Yes (from tempestwx.com) |
| Open-Meteo | Free weather forecasts | No — just works |
| OpenWeatherMap | Weather data | Yes (free tier available) |
| Home Assistant | Sensor data (soil moisture, etc.) | Long-lived access token |
| OpenAI | AI photo analysis + journal summaries | Yes (from platform.openai.com) |
| OpenPlantBook | Plant species enrichment | Yes (from open.plantbook.io) |
No API keys in config files — everything stored securely in the database and managed from the admin UI.
These are only needed for container/network configuration, not integrations:
# Production — customize for your domain
CORS_ORIGINS=https://garden.yourdomain.com # Allowed origins (default: http://localhost:3400)
COOKIE_DOMAIN=.yourdomain.com # Cookie sharing across subdomains
NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL=https://api.yourdomain.com # API URL for the browser (default: http://localhost:3402)
# Optional — can also be set via Settings > Integrations
OPENAI_API_KEY= # Pre-configure OpenAI at startup
HA_TOKEN= # Pre-configure Home Assistant at startup
HA_URL= # Home Assistant URL (default: http://homeassistant.local:8123)For local development, the defaults work out of the box — no .env changes needed.
Garden Co-op (federation) lets you connect multiple Garden Godmother instances so neighbors, community gardens, or co-op members can share harvest surplus, seed swaps, and pest alerts in real time.
- Go to Settings → Community on your instance.
- Set a display name for your garden (this is how peers will see you).
- Share your instance's URL with anyone you want to connect with.
In Settings → Community, enter a peer's Garden Godmother URL and click Add Peer. Both instances will begin exchanging data automatically once the peer is added on both sides.
| Feature | Where to find it |
|---|---|
| Harvest surplus | Harvest page → "Available Near You" |
| Seed swap offers | Seeds page → "Community Seed Swaps" |
| Pest alerts | Pests page → "Community Alerts" |
| All activity | /coop feed |
| Summary | Dashboard → CoopSummaryWidget |
Surplus and swap offers are opt-in — you choose when to publish them. Pest alerts can be broadcast to all peers from the Pests page.
Meshtastic integration lets your co-op communicate over LoRa radio mesh with no internet connection — useful for remote plots, community gardens with poor connectivity, or resilience.
- A Meshtastic-compatible LoRa radio node (e.g., LilyGo T-Beam, RAK WisBlock, Heltec)
- The node running on your local network or reachable by hostname/IP
- Meshtastic firmware configured and the node accessible via TCP
- On your Meshtastic node, create a channel named
gardening(recommended). Note its channel index (0 is the default/primary channel). - In Garden Godmother, go to Settings → Meshtastic.
- Enter your node's hostname or IP address — the app connects on TCP port 4403.
- Enter the channel index for your
gardeningchannel. - Save. Garden Godmother will connect and begin relaying co-op messages over the mesh.
When Meshtastic is configured, co-op alerts (pest warnings, surplus availability, seed swap offers) are also sent over the LoRa mesh to peers within radio range. This works even when garden instances can't reach each other over the internet.
Browser → garden-web (Next.js :3400) → garden-api (FastAPI :3402) → SQLite
| Service | Description | Port |
|---|---|---|
garden-web |
Next.js frontend | 3400 |
garden-api |
FastAPI backend (25+ modules) | 3402 |
- Database: SQLite, persisted via Docker volume
- Backups: Hourly snapshots, 14-day retention
- HTTPS: Via Cloudflare Tunnel, Caddy, nginx, or any reverse proxy
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| Dashboard with weather forecast | Property map with sun tracking |
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| Plant library (273+ species) | Monthly planting calendar |
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| Smart task management | Ground plant areas |
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| Clean login page | Planter management |
See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, code style, and PR guidelines.