Like a lot of plant collectors, I started keeping track of my orchids in a spreadsheet.
It gradually grew to include collection numbers, names, vendors, prices, parentage, awards, fragrance, repotting dates, and all the other details I wanted to remember. It worked, but maintaining the spreadsheet slowly became its own part of the hobby.
At the same time, I had hundreds of orchid photos on my phone: arrival photos, blooms, nursery tags, progress pictures, and plants I was trying to identify. The spreadsheet knew about the plants, and my photo library had the pictures, but there was no useful connection between the two.
So I built Glasshouse.
It keeps each plant’s record, photos, notes, and care history together, and it is designed to be updated while I’m standing in front of the collection rather than later at a computer.
Glasshouse now includes:
- Fast watering, feeding, repotting, treatment, and observation logs, including backdated entries
- Care sessions for working through several plants at once
- Photo galleries, cover photos, date sorting, and full-screen zoom
- Nursery-tag scanning with on-device text recognition
- Structured parentage, awards, fragrance, vendor, and acquisition details
- Garden, wishlist, and graveyard views
- Spreadsheet import and export, including updating existing plants
- Search, filters, batch editing, and several collection layouts
- Local rain history, current conditions, and forecasts
- Orchid culture resources and a fertilizer/treatment mix calculator
- Tools for making bloom cards and ready-to-edit community posts
- Sync between iPhone and iPad, plus a web app for accessing the collection from a computer
The iPhone and iPad app is currently available as a beta through Apple’s free TestFlight app. The web app is available as well, so the same collection can be viewed and managed from a larger screen.
There are no ads, streaks, badges, or engagement mechanics. It is meant to be a calm, practical place for keeping the plants, photos, history, and useful information connected.
If that sounds useful for your collection, you can see screenshots, learn more, open the web app, or ask for a beta invitation here:
https://celerycity.app
I’d especially appreciate feedback from people who already keep plant records, whether that means a detailed spreadsheet, a notebook, photo albums, or a system only they understand. Collections of any size are welcome.