Projects

A project represents one real or proposed design site. It keeps the site description, address, mapped boundary, area, soil information, linked planting recipes, and saved planting plans together.

Use a separate project when the location, site boundary, design purpose, or planning context is genuinely different. A project belongs to the account that created it: there is no project-owner field, ownership transfer, or multi-user project role in the project form. If someone else needs to inspect a design, share an individual saved planting plan rather than assuming that the entire project is collaborative.

A project boundary and base map are design aids, not a legal survey. Verify ownership lines, offsets, dimensions, access, utilities, levels, and construction positions against authoritative records and site measurements before implementation.

Check access and project capacity

Sign in and open Projects from the main navigation. The project list shows available work, recipe and plan counts, available location information, dates, and Edit and Delete actions. Use the card/list controls to change the presentation; the browser remembers that view preference on the device.

Your current account determines how many projects you can own. Check the allowance shown under Subscription rather than relying on a fixed number in this guide. When the allowance has been reached, New Project is disabled.

If a plan change leaves the account above its current allowance, the application keeps the work but can place some projects under Frozen Projects on the project list. Treat that label as an allowance warning; availability can differ between screens. Restoring suitable access returns the normal list state. Do not delete an important project merely to test capacity: project deletion also removes its project-scoped plans and history. See Plans and Feature Access.

Prepare before creating a project

Collect enough information to recognise and locate the site:

• a clear project name and short design brief;
• an address, place name, or approximate map position;
• the intended outer design boundary;
• reliable measurements or reference points where accuracy matters;
• known soil type, pH, and soil-moisture observations; and
• an initial idea of the planting functions or recipes required.

Only the name and boundary are essential to finish the wizard. It is better to leave optional site values blank than to present an unsupported guess as measured information.

The wizard saves an in-progress draft in the current browser, including an unfinished boundary. If the page is reloaded or the browser temporarily backgrounds the page before successful creation, it can restore entered values, the current step, and placed boundary points on that device. The draft is not an account backup and is not intended for moving setup between browsers.

Create a project with the five-step wizard

Open Projects, select New Project, and follow the New project wizard. Use Previous and Next to review the five steps before selecting Create project.

Step 1: Basic data

Enter a required project name and an optional description.

Choose a name that remains recognisable when the account contains several sites or design alternatives. Use the description for the site's purpose, constraints, phase, or other project-wide context. Detailed plant choices belong in recipes, while map-specific observations can be recorded in the planting plan.

Step 2: Choose location

Search for an address or place, select My location, or navigate manually on the map. An exact address is optional.

Before continuing:

1. Confirm that the map shows the intended property or design area.
2. Zoom in far enough to recognise stable site features.
3. Compare the imagery with current site knowledge because aerial and satellite layers can be old, shifted, seasonally obscured, or captured at an angle.

My location requires browser permission and reports the device's estimated position. It is useful for navigation, not for setting survey-grade coordinates. If location permission is denied, search by place or pan the map manually.

The stored address and the drawn boundary are separate. An address helps describe and find the site; it does not define the plan's working area.

Step 3: Site boundary

One completed site boundary is required. It defines the main design area used by the Digital Planting Plan, generator, area display, visual mockup, and other map workflows.

The wizard provides:

• Draw freeform shape (recommended) for tracing the actual site;
• Draw rectangle for a simple rectangular area;
• Undo last point while drawing;
• Complete boundary to finish the shape; and
• Draw again to discard it and restart.

Prefer Draw freeform shape, especially for an irregular site or when the project will use several spatial tools. Click around the outer edge in a consistent order, complete the boundary, and then drag points or add a point along an edge to refine it.

On a touch-first phone or small tablet, choosing a drawing method opens a full-screen map workspace. A fixed crosshair marks the point that will be added: move the map until the crosshair is over a corner, select Add point, and repeat. The controls remain fixed below the map, so you do not need to alternate between map taps and scrolling. Undo removes the last point and Complete boundary becomes available after a valid shape has at least three corners. For a rectangle, add the first corner and the diagonally opposite corner, review the four generated corners, and then complete it.

To refine a completed boundary on a phone, select Edit boundary. Use the previous and next controls to choose a numbered corner, pan the map until the crosshair is at the corrected position, and then move that corner. You can also insert a corner after the selected one or remove it while at least three valid corners remain. On a desktop, the existing direct click, drag, and edge-insertion controls remain available.

Use the smallest number of points that still represents the relevant shape. Excessive detail copied from uncertain imagery creates an appearance of precision without improving the design. Avoid self-crossing edges and check narrow corners carefully.

The application calculates project area from the completed boundary. Treat that area as a planning estimate whose quality depends on the coordinates you drew.

Step 4: Soil data

All values in this step are optional and allow more than one selection. The current fields and choices are:

Field	Choices shown in the wizard
Soil type	Sand (light), Loam (medium), Clay (heavy)
pH value	Acid, Neutral, Basic
Humidity	Wet, Moist, Permeable

Here Humidity describes the stored soil-moisture/drainage context, not atmospheric humidity. Select several values only when the project genuinely contains different conditions. The project does not store where each condition occurs; map local variation in the plan or project notes.

These broad categories support context and filtering but do not replace soil profiles, laboratory pH, infiltration tests, seasonal water observations, contamination checks, or local agronomic advice.

Step 5: Review

Review the name, description, address, boundary, calculated area, and soil data. Use Previous to correct anything that is wrong, then select Create project.

After successful creation, the project workspace opens and the browser removes the setup draft. If creation fails, read the message, keep the page open, and correct the indicated step rather than drawing a second approximate boundary elsewhere.

Understand the project workspace

The project page is the hub for the site. Its main areas are:

Area	What it contains
Project Details	Description, area, address, soil, pH, moisture, USDA Zone, and dates
Quick Actions	Add Recipe, New planting plan, Visual mockup when a saved plan exists, and Back to projects
Project Location	The current map boundary and Edit Location
Planting Recipes	Standard recipes connected to the project
Planting plans	Saved spatial plans, update dates, Continue designing, Rename, and Delete

When plans exist, Latest planting plan at the top opens the most recently updated plan. Check its name before editing, especially when the project contains similar alternatives.

Read and update site information

Select Edit in the project header to update:

• project name;
• description;
• address;
• soil type;
• pH; and
• soil moisture.

This form does not change the mapped boundary. Use Edit Location in Project Location for boundary work.

Changing the address does not automatically move or redraw the boundary. Likewise, searching for a place inside Edit Location helps position the map but does not rewrite the stored project address. Review both values after a substantial location correction.

Project site data and the boundary are shared context for every planting plan in the project. They are not captured inside planting-plan version history. If you change them, record why and verify all dependent plans; restoring an earlier plan version will not restore the old project address, site fields, or boundary.

Interpret the USDA Zone carefully

The project page can show a rough USDA Zone indicator for the mapped location. The current calculation uses the minimum temperature from calendar year 2022, recognises only the four bands from 8a through 9b, and can fall back to 8b for temperatures outside those mapped bands. The value may also be unavailable. It is an orientation aid, not a verified hardiness classification for the site.

Local cold pockets, elevation, wind, snow cover, urban heat, data period, and exceptional winters can change actual plant survival. Compare the estimate with a suitable regional hardiness source and observed local conditions. Do not treat a missing zone as permission to ignore hardiness.

Edit the project boundary

Select Edit Location to open Project boundary. The boundary editor provides Search address or place, Move, Draw, Rectangle, Edit, Colour, Delete, Cancel, and Save boundary.

Use the controls deliberately:

1. Search or pan to the correct site.
2. Inspect the existing boundary before changing it.
3. Use Edit for small point corrections.
4. Use Delete only when the existing shape must be replaced.
5. Prefer Draw for a replacement freeform boundary that will be used throughout the design tools.
6. Select Save boundary and then reopen the project map to verify the result.

On a touch-first phone, Draw and Rectangle use the same centre-crosshair method as the creation wizard: pan the map under the fixed crosshair and use the large bottom controls to add or undo points. In Edit, select a numbered corner, pan the map, and apply the move instead of trying to grab a small map handle. This makes deliberate one-handed corrections possible without changing the stored polygon format.

The project supports one active boundary. A newly drawn shape replaces the previous geometry when saved. Cancel leaves the stored project unchanged; it is safer than attempting to redraw when the correct boundary is still visible.

Use Draw rather than Rectangle when replacing a boundary in Edit Location. Rectangle geometry created in this editor may not carry through consistently to the project page and downstream planning tools. If you use it, save and verify the boundary in the project and planner before continuing. A rectangle created during the original five-step project wizard is stored differently and can be used as a normal project boundary.

Moving the boundary after design work has started can put saved plants, zones, drawings, paths, control points, or generated layers outside the intended site. Open every relevant plan after a boundary change and verify scale and alignment. Plan history protects plan data, not previous project boundaries.

Add standard planting recipes

Recipes provide reusable palettes for the project.

1. Select Add Recipe from Quick Actions or the empty Planting Recipes section.
2. Choose one of your standard planting recipes.
3. Select Add Recipe.
4. Confirm that its card appears under Planting Recipes.

Pollinator recipes are intentionally absent because they contain flowering-database records that the spatial editor does not use. Transfer the required species into a standard planting recipe first. See Planting Recipes, Pollinator Plant Database, and Flowering Arc.

A connected recipe remains an account-owned reusable object, not a project copy. Editing it can change the palette in every linked project. Removing it from the project only removes the connection; it does not delete the recipe and does not automatically remove plant markers already stored in saved plans.

Create and manage planting plans

Select New planting plan to start a separate spatial design. If the project has none, the Planting plans section offers Create the first planting plan.

Give each plan a unique, descriptive name within the project. Examples include “Initial concept”, “Dense layout”, “Phase 1”, or “North field alternative”. Open a card with Continue designing, or use Rename and Delete for plan management.

Distinguish alternatives from revisions

Projects support two different kinds of design history:

• create a separate planting plan for a genuinely different alternative, phase, or scenario that must remain independently editable;
• save a new version inside the same plan for successive states of one design.

The Digital Planting Plan stores immutable revisions when a meaningful version is saved. Plan hub > Version history lists them and can restore an earlier design. Restoring does not erase later history; it creates another revision using the selected earlier state.

Do not create a separate plan for every small edit, and do not rely on revision history to compare independent concepts indefinitely. Conversely, renaming a plan does not create an alternative. See Digital Planting Plan for saving, autosave, history, restoration, and map editing.

Deleting an individual plan permanently removes that plan's revisions, active share links, and plan-based purchase-list versions. It does not delete the project or its standalone recipes. Save a backup first when the plan may be needed later.

Create a visual mockup

Visual mockup appears after the project has at least one saved planting plan. It opens a presentation-oriented representation based on a selected or recent plan and stores style choices for that plan.

A mockup is for communication and visual exploration. It does not replace the measured plan, technical drawing, plant inventory, or site check, and visual scale or appearance should not be interpreted as a construction specification.

Share a planting plan

Projects remain private to their owning account. Sharing creates a link to an individual saved planting plan; it does not grant access to edit the project, recipes, boundary, or other plans.

When the feature is available, the plan-sharing workflow can set:

• a share name and description;
• Hide exact location;
• whether visitors may add annotations; and
• an optional recipient email to which the new link is sent.

Anyone who receives an active URL may be able to open it and forward it. Hide the location when the background would reveal a private residence, client, sensitive habitat, valuable crop, or security detail. Annotations are feedback attached to the plan; they do not let a visitor move plants or modify the design.

Hide exact location removes the geographic background and related map context from the public presentation, but it does not strip or anonymise the plan's coordinates or georeferenced geometry. Do not use a share link for a sensitive site when disclosure of coordinates or design geometry itself would be unacceptable.

Manage active links from the planner or Sharing in the main navigation, and deactivate a link when access should end. Planting-plan sharing depends on current feature access. See Plans and Feature Access and the sharing section of Digital Planting Plan.

Back up and restore project work

For supported accounts, one saved planting plan can be downloaded as an encrypted .agroforest backup containing that plan's current data and annotations plus supported project, recipe, and plant context. Backup format 2.2 also includes the exporting account's My Plants library and recipe-to-personal-plant relationships so stable user:<uuid> references can be restored without silently becoming catalogue plants. The file is encrypted and account-bound, but it still contains private project and library content; store it accordingly.

It is a plan-scoped backup, not a complete archive of the project. It does not preserve the project's other plans, plan revision history, share links, orthomap files, or every project field such as its address. Back up every required plan and retain those other records separately before deleting a project.

To restore one, open Projects, select Import Backup, validate the file, review its metadata, optionally change the plan name, and confirm. Do not edit the encrypted file manually. If your account already has a project with the exact backed-up title, import adds the plan to that existing project and keeps the existing project's current site data. Otherwise it creates a project from the supported backup fields. It can also create missing recipe records from the backup and makes a conflicting plan name unique.

My Plants entries are deduplicated within the importing account by their stable UUID and, where available, normalized scientific name. Any plan or recipe reference is rewritten to the actual restored or reused entry. Archived entries remain archived for historical snapshots; they cannot create new placements. A UUID already owned by another account is rejected without importing anything, and an import that would exceed the active My Plants allowance is rejected before mutation. Existing owner-bound format 2.1 backups remain accepted. Inspect the resulting project, recipes, My Plants library, usage, and plan rather than assuming that import recreated the complete original context or history.

Backup import is a protected feature and may be disabled under the current access. See the backup section of Digital Planting Plan for the complete workflow.

Delete a project safely

Select Delete only after reviewing everything stored inside the project. Deletion is permanent and removes project-scoped data, including:

• saved planting plans;
• their version history;
• active planting-plan share links;
• plan-based purchase-list versions;
• project orthomap layers and processed files; and
• other project synchronization or map context.

Standalone planting recipes are not deleted because they belong to the account independently; their connections to this project disappear. A recipe may still be linked to other projects.

Before deletion, download required plan backups or exports, record any annotations or implementation information that must be retained, and verify that you selected the correct similarly named project.

Recommended workflow

1. Create the project with a recognisable name and concise purpose.
2. Locate the site, then draw and verify one accurate freeform boundary.
3. Record only site conditions you can support with observations or measurements.
4. Create or attach one or more standard planting recipes.
5. Start a named planting plan and save an early version.
6. Place plants and site elements while checking the boundary and base-map accuracy.
7. Save revisions for meaningful progress; create separate plans only for real alternatives or phases.
8. Review inventory, dimensions, access, site constraints, and implementation requirements.
9. Create a plan-linked purchase list when marker quantities are ready for sourcing.
10. Use a visual mockup or active share link only after checking privacy and presentation accuracy.
11. Download a backup before destructive changes, major handoff, or project deletion when the feature is available.

Troubleshooting

Situation	What to check
New Project is disabled	Review project capacity under Subscription.
A project appears under Frozen Projects	The account is above its current allowance. Restore suitable access or carefully review unneeded work before deletion.
My location does nothing	Allow browser location access, or search by place and navigate manually. Device location is optional.
The wizard cannot continue from Site boundary	Complete one closed boundary. Use Draw freeform shape, place enough distinct corners, and select Complete boundary.
A map tap on a phone does not add a corner	In the mobile full-screen workspace, map gestures only position the crosshair. Pan the map, then select Add point in the fixed bottom controls.
A phone reloads while the boundary is unfinished	Reopen the same wizard in the same browser. The local draft should restore the current step and valid points; verify them against the imagery before continuing.
The calculated area looks wrong	Check that the map is on the correct site, the boundary does not cross itself, and every corner follows the intended edge. Redraw with a simpler freeform shape if necessary.
The address is correct but the boundary is elsewhere	Address and boundary are separate. Open Edit Location, position the map, correct the boundary, and save it.
Editing the address did not move the plan	This is expected. Address editing does not change saved geometry.
USDA Zone remains - or seems unsuitable	The estimate may be unavailable or too broad. Use an authoritative regional source and local observations.
A pollinator recipe is missing from Add Recipe	Projects accept standard planting recipes only. Build a standard recipe from the corresponding main-database species.
Removing a recipe did not remove planted markers	Removing the link changes the palette, not existing plan elements. Edit the plan and save a new version.
Visual mockup is missing	Save at least one planting plan first.
An earlier design is needed	Open the same plan and use Plan hub > Version history. Use a separate plan only when it is an independent alternative.
A shared link reveals too much context	Edit or deactivate it, and enable Hide exact location before creating a replacement.
Import Backup is disabled	Check whether backup tools are included in the current advanced-feature access. If the account should have access, refresh its subscription status and reload the page.

Continue the workflow

Build the plant palette with Planting Recipes, then open the Digital Planting Plan to create the spatial design. When the design or recipe quantities are ready, continue with Procurement.