Bloom planner

The Bloom planner helps you build a plant selection around recorded flowering months. Read your selection in a January–December calendar, choose a month that needs attention, and add candidates without leaving the workspace.

Month totals count distinct plant records with known flowering periods. They do not measure flower abundance, nectar or pollen production, or whether a site provides enough food for pollinators.

Open the Bloom planner

Open Bloom planner directly, or open Plants and recipes, find Pollinators, and select Bloom planner. The same action is available in the Pollinator plants catalog and in a pollinator recipe's header. Existing Flowering Arc links redirect permanently to the new planner address.

You can explore and build a temporary plant selection without an account. Select Create account to save, or Sign in if you already have an account. Recipes are saved only to your account.

Tour the workspace

Select Start guided tour beside the page title for a short walkthrough of the season, calendar, plant suggestions and saving. The guide is offered on your first visit. You can leave it at any time with Exit tour or Escape, and restart it from the same button. Following the guide does not change your planting mix or save a recipe.

Start with an empty selection, add a curated mix, or open one of your saved pollinator recipes. Set the start and end months of the season you want to examine. The default covers the whole year; a target such as November–February can cross the year boundary.

The calendar remains visible while you narrow the candidate list. Search and candidate filters never remove plants from your own selection.

Add a curated mix

Open Show mixes in the recipes block to explore Curated mixes; this section starts collapsed and remembers your preference. The cards offer three reviewed planting ideas for temperate European gardens: Sunny herb border, Moist flower border and Flowering food forest edge. Each card shows its site conditions and recorded flowering months. Expand See all plants & growing notes to review the species and regional or growing limitations; the full planting guide includes sources and layout advice. A mix appears only when its complete reviewed selection is available in the catalog.

Select Add plants to my mix to add the species you do not already have. The button shows how many new plants will be added. Your existing plants, recipe name, filters and target season stay in place. You can combine several mixes without duplicate plants, and Undo reverses a whole mix addition at once. The updated calendar reflects the combined selection immediately.

Use Hide mixes to collapse the cards and Show mixes to open them again. The planner remembers this display preference in your browser.

Adding a curated mix does not save a recipe. Use Create account to save or Save recipe when you are ready to keep your finished mix in your account.

Read the calendar

Each row names one selected plant. Marked cells show its recorded flowering months. A November–February flowering period crosses the year boundary and appears in November, December, January and February. Overlapping periods for one plant still contribute only one record per month.

The totals above the calendar count all selected plants with recorded flowering in each month. Plants with no flowering-period data stay visible with an unknown-data indication and do not contribute to these totals. An unknown period is not evidence that a plant does not flower.

Set a target season to focus your review. A month with no recorded bloom inside that season is a place to investigate, not a prediction that no flowers will be available. Local weather, cultivar, location and management can shift flowering dates.

Add plants for a month

1. Select a month in the calendar, such as September.
2. Review candidates that add recorded bloom in that month. Each suggestion explains its contribution.
3. Refine the list by name, plant type or native region. Set light, moisture and soil preferences to rank known site matches first.
4. Inspect a candidate's details and select Add.
5. Review the updated calendar and group analysis immediately.

Adding a plant does not change screens. Selected plants stay visible even when they do not match the current candidate filters. Use a plant's separate remove action to take it out of the selection, or Undo to reverse the latest selection change during your current session.

Site preferences distinguish recorded matches from unknown conditions. Missing site data does not establish that a plant is unsuitable and does not remove it from the candidates. Broad native-region labels do not establish local provenance or site suitability.

Understand pollinator analysis

The planner reports pollinator groups separately. For each group, monthly support counts include selected plants with recorded bloom in that month and a known suitability rating of Medium or High for that group. A strong honey-bee assessment does not imply the same value for solitary bees or other groups.

These counts are distinct from the calendar's total flowering-species counts. A plant can contribute to a month's bloom total without meeting a particular group's suitability threshold.

Select a group and month in the analysis to look for candidates for that gap. The candidate group filter follows that selection. Candidate filters also let you choose an explicit suitability threshold; changing it does not change which selected plants count in the analysis, which always uses Medium or High suitability.

Open plant details to inspect suitability, nectar and pollen values for each group. Follow the plant-profile and source links to examine supporting information. Missing assessments and missing flowering periods remain identified as unknown; they are not treated as confirmed zero support.

The analysis counts plant records, not installed quantity, floral area or carrying capacity. A complete run of marked months is not a score for sufficient food supply.

Save and resume your work

While signed out, your selection is temporary and stays in the current browser tab across a refresh. It is not a saved recipe. Select Create account to save to register, or Sign in to use an existing account. This action keeps your selection available for two hours while you finish registration or sign-in in the same browser, including opening an email verification link in another tab.

After signing in, select Save recipe to keep the mix in your account. Give it a clear name and check for Recipe saved to your account. The planner returns you to your selection after registration. Unsaved edits to an account recipe can be recovered in the same browser, but only Save recipe updates the recipe in your account.

Adding, removing and undoing plants in the planner change the draft. They do not automatically update the server recipe. Save again after making changes you want to keep in your account. Account recipe allowances still apply when creating a recipe.

You can return through Bloom planner in the recipe header to review its saved selection and search the wider database for additions.

Pollinator recipes and spatial design

A pollinator recipe contains records from the Pollinator Plant Database. It is separate from a standard planting recipe, which contains plants and cultivars from the main agroforestry database.

Pollinator recipes cannot supply plants directly to a project or the Digital Planting Plan. When you are ready to make a spatial design, collect the corresponding species in a standard planting recipe and verify their main-database profiles. Both recipe types count towards your account's recipe allowance.

Troubleshooting

Related guides

• Pollinator Plant Database covers plant records, filters and supporting information.
• Planting Recipes explains the two recipe types and the route to spatial design.
• Plans and Feature Access explains account recipe allowances.