Ellen Hermance
Founder of PlantCareAI
My plant obsession started the way a lot of them did: in 2020, when the world shut down and I needed something to care for that wasn't a screen. But the real origin is a baby Bird of Paradise a family friend gave us when we moved into our Austin home in 2017. For three years it sat in various corners, occasionally watered, never growing, because I had no idea what it needed.
Then a couple of local plant shops lit the fire, my collection grew fast, and one of those new arrivals brought spider mites straight to that Bird of Paradise. Saving it took weeks of research and stubbornness, and it changed how I cared for everything. That plant is now taller than I am. I killed others along the way, and every one of them taught me something that's now in these guides. These days the houseplants are thriving and the obsession has spilled into the gardens around the house.
Somewhere in there, my plant questions and my day job converged. I'm a web developer with an MS in Computer Science from Tufts University, and I'd been using AI assistants for my never-ending plant care research when it clicked: the missing piece in every reminder app I'd tried was the weather outside my actual window. So I built PlantCareAI, the tool I wanted all along.
About the guides
Every guide starts from university extension and horticultural references, is drafted with help from the same AI that powers the app, and is reviewed and edited by me. I use that same AI on my own plants at least once a week, so I'm my own first user. If you spot an error, I want to know.
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