A few years ago, I left for a work trip. I asked my girlfriend to take care of my plants while I was away. She was nervous, she was not a natural plant parent and I had a sort of absurd number of plants to keep track of. 
I made her a list with all my plants and instructions. I asked her to water this plant with my watering can for the count of two, this for the count of three, and this one every day for the count of one. I put it all on a calendar and a sticky note for peace of mind.
When I came home, she was sitting in our little houseplant jungle, a tiny sunroom, waiting to greet me. As we hugged, I looked over her shoulder at my darling plant babies, which all looked happy except one. One of my favorite plants, a very sensitive asparagus fern, was drooping and a few shoots had become slightly brown. Over the next few days, the tiny, delicate leaves dropped en masse, covering our floor with sad, dust-like remnants of a dying plant.
My girlfriend was mortified, she had killed one of my favorite houseplants. I told her it was not her fault, I had forgotten to tell her to water the little dish of rocks I used as a humidity tray at the bottom of the pot, which gave my fern the humidity it needed.
The fern pulled through, eventually, but the incident directed my nerdy hobby of DIY computing toward a very important goal: give everyone the ability to take care of any plant, even the most exotic, touchy plants out there.
Today, I’m happy to say that same asparagus fern has been thriving for more than two years whether I’m there, or away for days because of the FlorA Plant Care device I created.
It’s been a long labor of love during which I taught myself to build electronic devices, code them and automate them from a big plant-care database. Today, FlorA Plant Care is a rock-solid device that cares for plants even better than me. I only did so because there was nothing like what I wanted out there. I wanted something that would monitor my houseplant’s environment, let me know if something was wrong, and water it at just the right time. But I didn’t want a bunch of ugly wires, tubes or blinking lights sitting in my sunroom–somewhere I go to relax away from technology.
I tried all sorts of the devices out there, and they kind of suck. The very small percentage of devices that actually work do one thing: monitor plants.
Getting a little chart from my various pothos, my ponytail palm or my fiddle leaf fig is neat, but I generally know the sun rises, provides light and sets and my thermostat keeps things right around 72 degrees. I know that barring some odd misfortune, my houseplants are sitting in my house. What I needed was something that would help me actually care for them.
So out of necessity, I developed the idea for FlorA Plant Care, the first truly utilitarian houseplant tender and auto-watering device that gives houseplant owners care advice, waters plants, and monitors environment data to help those plants thrive and plant parents understand what’s going on with their plants.
How it works
How? Well, based on the temperature, humidity and light readings, our proprietary machine learning algorithm paired with a robust plant-care database watches to see if a houseplant is getting everything it needs. If it’s not sunny enough, our FlorA will send a low-light alert and suggest moving it to an east-facing window or help it with a grow light.
If it’s too cold, FlorA will send an alert with the best temperature range based on our database. And if the soil is dry, FlorA will provide water, misting or alert the plant owner that it’s time to fill the FlorA reservoir. Too much water? Well, that just doesn’t happen because the in-plant device monitors soil moisture too. But if aunt Sally comes over and douses your ZZ plant, you’ll get an alert that it’s drowning too.
There are other use cases too, for folks that just don’t know what plant to get, placing a FlorA device in a window, on a shelf or in a corner, it will tell you the best plant for that environment. Now designing around plants is simple and effective without requiring interior designers or homeowners to learn all about plants or gamble who knows how many times on something from the garden center.
Greener green buddies
And a close second to providing great plant care was caring for our planet. Despite the healthy halo, the houseplant industry is an incredibly wasteful industry that churns carbon into our air and wastes countless gallons of water. In essence, the industry relies on plant parents killing their plants. Houseplants generally grow far from where people live, and they’re delivered via truck, a toxic cargo ship or an airplane with a lot of dirt, plastic.
Then we all expend more carbon, plastic and water purchasing it and then we just hope it lives or we go buy another one? That is some incredible waste to fill a cute pot for a few weeks or a month. With FlorA Plant Care, plant owners can get more exotic, touchy plants or invest in great plants and be sure it will not just survive but thrive without starting that process all over again.
Follow along below for more about the system, how it works and what it took to develop, and get early notifications for our impending Kickstarter launch or official sale!