01The story
How Percy started
I’ll give you the short, less indulgent version first.
I have three notebooks with six entries each, none of them dated, one of them containing a grocery list. I did not simply remember things. Then I realized AI made something possible for gardeners that had never existed before: an actual garden memory. A way to capture time and understand your garden across seasons. What you planted, picked, and noticed. What worked. What was beautiful. And what your kid said when she found the first strawberry of summer. Once I saw that, I couldn’t not build it.
That’s the story. Here’s the longer version, starting with the part where I was bad at this.
I didn’t start out as much of a gardener. A few terra cotta pots on a city patio. Some basil that bolted the moment it sensed my optimism, and some mint that staged a hostile takeover of the entire operation. I thought I understood gardening because I killed plants in a more informed way.
Then we moved to the suburbs. A few raised beds became a few more raised beds. I planted fruit trees. I pulled out a section of invasive privet and turned it into a pollinator garden. What started as a casual interest became, without warning, one of the most meaningful parts of my life.
I’ve thought a lot about what gardening actually gives you.
The obvious answer is tomatoes.
The real answer has always been harder to put a finger on. It’s the morning check-in. Going outside with coffee to see what changed overnight. The hummingbird at the zinnias. The kids picking strawberries, none of which make it back to the kitchen. The satisfaction of watching something you started from seed in February becoming the thing feeding your entire family in August. The patience gardening requires, which turns out to be extremely good practice for everything else in a life raising kids who eat all your strawberries.
None of that fits in a spreadsheet column.
I wanted Percy to handle all of it. The plantings and the harvests and the pest problems and the plans for next year, yes. Every tool tries to do that part, and most of them make it feel like homework. But I also wanted Percy to hold onto the rest of it. The enjoyment. The noticing. The specific satisfaction that comes from looking back at a season and realizing what it gave back (much of which can’t be weighed on a produce scale) and the quiet accumulation that comes from caring deeply about one piece of ground for years. Percy makes sure all of it is captured and nothing is lost between Octobers.
Percy is my love letter to gardening.
I hope it shows.
