Your garden journal belongs to you.

Information you choose to provide

We use your email address and account identifier to sign you in and keep your records associated with your account. Garden records may include plant names, planting and purchase dates, nursery and purchase details, garden zones, Zip code, growing conditions, photos, notes, observations, tasks and history. You choose what to add.

Location features use a Zip code and approximate coordinates for that Zip code. They do not require your phone’s precise GPS location. A photo you select may itself contain private information or embedded location metadata. Avoid uploading anything you do not want stored.

How your records are used

We use your records to provide your garden journal, synchronize your devices, process requested scans, show your history and tasks, and support the app. Signing into Garden Ally with the same account keeps your records available across your devices.

We do not sell personal information or use garden content for targeted advertising. Private journal content is not automatically posted to the Community Gallery.

Plant-tag and receipt scans

When you agree to a tag or receipt-photo scan, Garden Ally sends the selected image through our backend to OpenAI to extract plant and purchase details. Images may include names, addresses, payment details or other personal information printed on a receipt. Remove information you do not want processed. You review the results before adding plants.

Forwarding a receipt to plants@garden-ally.com sends its sender details, subject, message and supported attachments through Cloudflare to our backend. The receipt content and supported attachments are sent to OpenAI for extraction. We keep the intake information and extracted purchase details for your review and maintain per-account receipt and scan usage records to apply allowances.

Ordinary journal photos are not automatically sent to OpenAI. Scan requests are configured not to store a Responses API response object. This does not mean OpenAI has no operational or abuse-monitoring retention. See OpenAI’s business-data privacy information.

Optional community sharing

Photos are private by default. You can choose eligible plant photos individually or enable automatic submission of eligible plant photos. Submissions are reviewed before appearing in the signed-in Community Gallery. Tag scans and receipt scans are excluded.

A shared entry contains only its photo, common and scientific plant names, date planted, photo date, Zip code and your chosen user name. Private notes and captions are excluded. The separate gallery image is re-encoded to remove embedded photo metadata. The visible photo itself may still reveal a place or person; review it before sharing.

You can unshare a photo without deleting your private copy, change your sharing preferences, report a photo, or block a contributor. Unsharing removes the gallery entry, but cannot recall copies someone has already saved. Photos must be yours to share and must not contain abusive, illegal or otherwise inappropriate content. Contact us about misuse or a moderation concern.

Distance filters use approximate Zip-code locations rather than the exact place where a photo was taken.

Service providers and external sharing

• Supabase provides account authentication, database services and private photo storage.
• OpenAI processes scans and forwarded receipts as described above.
• Cloudflare hosts this website and handles forwarded receipt email routing and processing.
• Expo delivers app updates. Update requests may include your operating system, app/runtime information, a random installation token and technical error or crash information needed to deliver and troubleshoot updates. Garden Ally does not attach your email or garden records to these update requests. See Expo’s privacy explanation.

A Zip-code lookup may use the external phzmapi.org service if local reference data does not contain the Zip code. That request sends the Zip code. Zip location reference data also includes GeoNames data under CC BY 4.0.

When you export or share a report, you choose its destination. The recipient receives the information included in that report. External websites have their own privacy practices.

Your choices, export and deletion

You can edit or delete individual garden records, export plant records and photo files, and choose whether to share eligible photos. In the public release, Settings → Privacy and account → Delete account permanently deletes the account and its associated garden, photos, history and gallery posts after you enter your email and confirm. There is no recovery period. Deleting your account removes its shared records from all devices signed into that account.

Deletion first removes community visibility and blocks new changes, then removes stored photo files and account-owned records. If interrupted, retry from the deletion screen or contact us for help. Export anything you want to keep beforehand. Copies you or another person saved outside Garden Ally are outside our control.

You can also email marcusinnovate@gmail.com for account access, correction, export, deletion or privacy questions. We verify account ownership before acting.

Retention and security

We keep account and garden records while your account is active, unless you delete them. We use access controls and private storage to protect them, but no service can guarantee absolute security. Authorized service providers process information needed to operate their services. Backups and operational logs may persist according to their retention schedules.

We may retain limited deletion-status records, security or abuse-prevention information, and information required by law. Deletion-status records contain an account identifier and timestamps, not garden content or photos. Prior website early-access applications are not public and may be retained to respond to the original inquiry; contact us to request deletion. The current marketing site does not offer a paid pilot.

The website and its hosting provider may process ordinary request and security logs, such as IP address and browser information, to deliver and protect the site.

Children and policy updates

Garden Ally is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their personal information. Contact us if you believe a child has provided information so we can address it. We will post policy changes here and update the effective date.

Contact and support

Garden Ally is operated by Marcus Rosenthal. For app support, privacy requests or gallery concerns, email marcusinnovate@gmail.com.

Garden Ally support · About the app