Every shelf in one place

The Library

Pick a plant, a problem or a question, and start reading. Everything here is cited and free to read.

Where to begin

Start here

Open botanical study notebooks on weathered wood with hand-drawn plant cross-sections, dried botanical pressings, and a brass magnifying glass

The Substrate Library · Foundation

The Root Zone: What Plants Are Actually Asking For

The mistake almost every Apprentice makes, and most Growers eventually correct, is assuming a bag labeled "potting soil" is engineered for the plants in their home. Once you have the root-zone framework, every other Substrate Library entry is a question of ratio rather than mystery.

11 min read For Apprentices & Growers

Working tools

Tools for the bench.

Santa Clara County planting timing

The Planting Calendar

What to sow this week, and why that week.

Eighty-two crops, worked out from this county's own climate record rather than copied from a national chart. Every window shows its working.

Open the calendar →

Plant diagnosis

The Field Key

What’s wrong with my plant? Start here.

A transparent, cited way to work out why a plant is struggling. Answer what you can actually see and walk a botanist's decision key to a real, sourced answer. No photo upload, no black box.

Open the Field Key →

Grow lights

The Grow-Light Calculator

How much light is your plant actually getting?

Turn a grow light's intensity and hours into a daily total, or work backward from a plant's target to the setting you need. Iowa State's formula and targets, a converter for lux and foot-candle readings, and every number cited.

Open the calculator →

Trees

The Tree Key

What tree is that?

Stand under it, look at a leaf, look at the bark, and answer what you can see. A picture key to more than 160 trees you'll meet in California, with more from across North America, a photo of every one, and a way to check the name a plant-ID app gave you.

Open the Tree Key →

12 collections

Browse the collections

Reference

Look it up: plants, potting mixes, leaves, flowers and pollinators.

A hand-colored engraved plate on aged cream paper: a Monstera leaf on its long stalk, an Alocasia, a spiraled Begonia rex and an Anthurium clarinervium, with younger leaves tucked between

The Plant Library One plant at a time, in depth: how it's built, where it comes from, what it needs. 9 profiles

Fenestrated Monstera leaves marbled with cream variegation

Care Guides Light, water and potting mix for each plant group, with a printable care sheet. 16 guides

Specimen-tray of six substrate ingredients (perlite, pumice, pine bark fines, charcoal, coco coir, and calcined clay) in wooden trays on kraft paper

The Substrate Library Which potting mix or garden soil to use and why, including the recipes we use ourselves. 15 guides

A hand-colored engraved plate of leaves laid in a sweep across aged cream paper: horse chestnut, ash, a heart-shaped leaf, an arrowhead leaf, two rounded leaves, a toothed autumn-colored leaf, clover, maple, a feathery mimosa leaf and a slender willow leaf

The Leaf Library Learn to read a leaf, one shape at a time. Just started

A hand-colored engraved plate of flowering stems gathered into one arc on aged cream paper: tulip, lavender spike, foxglove raceme, lilac panicle, yarrow corymb, an onion-family umbel, Queen Anne's lace, a daisy-type head, a calla lily with its spadix, and hanging birch catkins

The Flower Library Learn to read a flower, one form at a time. 6 forms

Seven Bay Area pollinators on a spray of California buckwheat (a hover fly, wool carder bee, bumble bee, carpenter bee, anise swallowtail and white-lined sphinx moth, with an Anna's hummingbird at California fuchsia), illustrated in vintage natural history register on cream paper

The Pollinator Library The Bay Area pollinators doing the work in your garden, and how to tell them apart. Just started

Guides

Do it: natives, myths checked, pests, propagation, tools and small spaces.

California chaparral and oak-woodland landscape: golden grasslands with coast live oaks, California fuchsia in coral bloom, and California buckwheat in the foreground, hazy ridges in distance

California Natives Plants native to the Bay Area, and how to grow them in a real yard. 15 plants

A clear glass plant mister in the middle of a single spray, droplets suspended mid-air over a Monstera deliciosa leaf in soft window light

Myths Demystified Common plant advice, checked against the evidence, one claim per entry. 8 verdicts

Six common plant pests in a row, illustrated in vintage natural history register on cream paper: a thrips, a two-spotted spider mite, a fungus gnat, a seven-spotted lady beetle, an aphid and a mealybug

The Field Manual Name the pest or problem on your plant, then deal with it. 6 entries

Rows of tissue-culture plantlets growing in sterile glass culture jars in a laboratory

The Propagation Lab Cuttings, division, seed and tissue culture, step by step. Just started

Specimen-tray of six gardening hand tools (bypass pruner, brass hand lens, pump sprayer, moisture meter, folding pruning saw, and pH meter probe) on kraft paper

The Workshop Tools, tested the way we'd test a recipe. Just started

Bright-window interior scene: weathered wooden window box planted with basil, parsley, chives, trailing nasturtium and cherry tomato vine on a sunny urban apartment windowsill

The Window Box Growing on a sill, a balcony or a fire escape. Just started

For members

What's in the Member Library.

Members get printable, bench-ready material we don't publish on the open site. Everything listed here is in the library now.

Founding, monthly or annual, every member gets all of it.

Become a Founding Member

Member PDF · Print sheets

Care Guide Bench Sheets

A printable sheet for each of our sixteen care guides: the quick-care grid, the substrate, the native range and the sources, sized to print and pin above the shelf.

Member PDF · 64 pages

The Substrate Guide

Every Guild mix, recipe by recipe, with what each plant wants and why. Read it on screen, or print it at full 9 × 12 for the bench.

Member tool

The Substrate Calculator

Pick a plant and a pot size, and it works out the quantities for the mix from the Guild's recipe system.

From the founder

The Founder's Note

A monthly note from the founder, with every past issue archived on the members page.