Grow Local Plants

The problem

There was no central ecosystem linking plant nurseries, landscapers, and home gardeners across the US.

Gardeners struggled to find plants native to their region, businesses had no tailored dashboards, and there was no intelligent way to search or get plant recommendations.

What we built

A comprehensive, multi-role platform that evolved from a business onboarding portal into a full membership ecosystem with embedded AI and QR-linked plant labels.

Members (gardeners) and businesses (nurseries / landscapers / both) operate on the same platform under an admin layer.

• Multi-role membership with conditional sign-ups for members and businesses.
• Business-type-aware dashboards that adapt to Nursery, Landscaper, or both, showing relevant inventory and service areas.
• State- and county-based native-plant filtering with intelligent search logic.
• Embedded conversational AI assistant trained on the site's botanical database, with context retention and plant recommendations (OpenAI).
• Printable, QR-code-enabled plant labels that connect a physical plant to its online profile.
• Member tools to explore region-native plants, save favorites, and discover local suppliers.

How we built it

Softr fronted a system orchestrated by Make and N8N automations, with the OpenAI API powering a context-aware botanical chat assistant.

CustomJS handled dynamic dashboards and the QR label generation, while state-county filtering provided location-aware discovery. The platform was refined iteratively across milestones, layering on the membership system, business dashboards, and finally the AI layer.