About Planting Matrix
Planting Matrix helps garden designers plan how a planting changes over a year, not just how it looks on installation day. Most tools show a garden as it is the day it goes in. This one shows what it becomes – month by month, as colour, height and structure shift through the seasons.
Building with our users
The tool is new. We've drawn on interfaces designers already know, but the way it works – planning a planting visually, across time – isn't something we've seen done quite like this before.
We're working parts of it out as we go, and we'd rather do that with the people using it than guess. If the way you design isn't reflected here yet, tell us – we'll keep shaping the tool around how people actually work.
A professional version
We're building towards a professional version with more depth and flexibility – room for how working studios actually operate. We'd like a few designers involved early to help shape it. If that's you, get in touch.
Who's behind it
We're two parents with a small garden that turned out to have more planting space than we expected. After years of building beds by hand – and wrangling increasingly complicated spreadsheets to track what goes where and when – we wanted to make something easier to use.
One of us is a developer who works on complex systems in the Norwegian public sector. The other works in digital marketing, and has spent years trying to understand what people actually want – and where we lose them.
We have three kids – nearly five, nearly seven, and eighteen – so we know not to waste time. Bootstrapped, and built slowly, in the evenings and between seasons.
Want to get involved?
We're looking for collaborators in a few areas. Botanists and garden designers who want to shape how the tool works, and gardeners who'd plan a planting with it and share photos as it grows. If that sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you.