The Project
From the start, the idea was simple: make accessible what isn't.
Looking for plants suitable for your land often means facing scientific jargon, complex databases, scattered sources... and a language barrier. I wanted to create a tool that simplifies, translates, and brings everything together. A tool for the curious, the passionate, beginners, and experts alike. For everyone who wants to cultivate differently, in harmony with their environment.
LexiPlant helps you discover edible, medicinal, or useful plants based on your location, soil type, and preferences. It helps you make informed choices and learn. It showcases an immense database that's been enriched, translated, made readable, and accessible for free.
This isn't just a search engine. It's a guide for sowing diversity, a compass to revitalize our gardens, balconies, and plots, both large and small.
And above all, it's an invitation: to reconnect with the living world, to cultivate resilience, and to pass on knowledge that mustn't be lost.
The Germination
As often happens, LexiPlant was born from a need. And nature, they say, abhors a vacuum.
I've always been told that Earth is generous, teeming with life, populated by countless plant and animal species. But this abundance is crumbling. Scientists now speak of a sixth mass extinction.
Facing this reality, I wanted to act in my own modest way. To offer my children a corner of the world where diversity isn't just a memory, but a living reality.
I started planting, experimenting, looking for species adapted to my mountain home — a harsh place where cold and snow don't give many plants a chance.
So I dug deeper. I questioned nursery owners, browsed permaculture forums, scoured specialized websites... until I found PFAF and Permapeople. Two impressively rich databases, gathering thousands of edible, medicinal, and useful plants. More than 8,000 species, described with precision.
I finally had access to knowledge.
But I wasn't the only one who needed it. And I quickly realized these treasures had their limitations: everything in English, poorly readable on mobile, complex to use, sometimes incomplete, and above all, full of references like USDA zones that are obscure to most amateur gardeners.
So I imagined a simpler, clearer, more accessible tool. A tool to make this wealth universal, translated, shared, adapted to everyone. From this dream, LexiPlant was born.
The Growth
I then embarked on this great project, not knowing exactly where it would lead me. Just with a persistent desire and the conviction that it needed to be done.
Challenges quickly emerged. How to translate, organize, and enrich all this data from elsewhere? How to automatically determine soil composition, minimum temperatures, and conditions specific to each corner of the world — so that everyone could cultivate plants truly suited to their environment?
And most importantly: how to make all of this readable, fluid, accessible... without losing depth or rigor?
My background in computer science gave me a foundation, but it was far from enough. So I learned on the job. I experimented, read, tested, and started over. A lot.
I became a designer to imagine a clear interface. A developer to make the engine run. An architect to envision the whole structure. A translator to expand the frontiers of knowledge. A writer to make it understandable. A tester to make it reliable. A community manager to create connections. And even a bit of a marketer, to begin spreading the word.
A real Swiss Army knife, serving a simple idea: making plant knowledge accessible to everyone.
I started by laying the foundations: breaking the project into manageable, achievable blocks. Building small, but building well. A welcoming homepage that explains and inspires exploration.
Then I dove into the data. Collecting, translating, structuring. Making more than 8,000 plant profiles readable. Adding concrete criteria useful for everyday gardeners.
To go further, I found an API to analyze soils and developed another to estimate winter temperatures based on location.
And this is just the beginning.
What's Next?
There's still much to do.
A simplified search engine that filters plants according to their use, cold tolerance, or soil type, based on your location.
The 8,000 profiles must become readable, useful, meaningful — not just a simple database, but a living, clear tool that inspires action.
And the project needs to thrive. To reach those who need it. To make LexiPlant known, build a community, listen to feedback, iterate.
Ideas are plentiful: allowing users to create lists of favorite plants, comment on or correct profiles to enrich the database together, receive weather alerts or reminders for sowing periods... And why not, eventually, identify potential pests or cross-reference field reports on a living map.
LexiPlant isn't fixed. It grows.
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