The Plant Library now has photos — and we want yours. Any gardener can submit a photo for a plant page in the library. Submitted photos go through a quick review before going live, to make sure every image in the library is actually useful. If your parsley photo is better than ours, it'll be the one everyone sees.
The review process is straightforward. When you submit a photo it enters a staging queue. Our team looks at each submission and either approves it, rejects it with a note explaining why, or flags it for a different reason — wrong plant, image too dark, too much background clutter. You'll see the status of any photo you've submitted from your account. Approved photos go straight to the plant page. Rejected ones include feedback so you know what to try differently.
The queue approach means quality is consistent. Not every photo of a tomato plant is useful — a blurry image taken in shade from two metres away helps nobody. By reviewing submissions before they go live, the library stays reliable. That said, the bar for approval isn't high: good light, plant clearly visible, reasonably in focus. Phone photos taken in your garden in the morning are exactly what we're looking for — they show what the plant actually looks like growing in Australian conditions, not a studio shot from a European seed catalogue.
We're also able to request photos for specific plants. If a plant page is missing an image and we think a lot of users would benefit from having one, we can flag it as "photo wanted" and that shows up as a prompt on the plant page. If you're growing that plant and have a decent photo of it, that's an easy contribution.
- Identify plants by name only
- "What does a healthy silverbeet look like?"
- Generic growing advice without visual context
- See what each plant looks like in Australian gardens
- Browse the library by sight
- Recognise growth stages and health at a glance
The goal is a plant photo library that reflects how these plants actually grow in Australia and New Zealand — in our climate, our soil, our light. Not imported stock photography. If you've got a good shot of something in your garden right now, open the plant page in the library and look for the "Contribute photo" option.