Interface

Grove is a web app that you can open in any modern browser – whether on a laptop, tablet or smartphone. To make things even more comfortable on mobile devices, we’re currently working on a dedicated app for Android and iOS.

In this chapter you get a first overview of the grove interface. You’ll learn the most important elements before we dive deeper into the features in the next chapters.

The navigation is always on the left-hand side.

  • On large screens (e.g. on a laptop or desktop PC) the navigation is visible by default. You can collapse or expand it using the three-line icon at the top left. It sits alongside the content without covering it.
  • On smaller devices, such as smartphones or tablets, the navigation is initially hidden. Tapping the three-line icon opens it. In this case it overlays the content – and disappears again as soon as you select a page or tap elsewhere.

When you have the “Beds” page open, the navigation also shows all your created beds. This lets you switch quickly between them – very handy when editing.

Year selector

Grove helps you plan and tend your beds across multiple years. For this there’s a year selector at the top right.

The Beds, Tasks and Harvest preview pages automatically adapt to the selected year. As soon as you change the year, the content updates accordingly.

If you have a specific bed open and change the year, grove shows you what happened on that bed in that year – provided, of course, that the bed was carried over through the year change.

Actions

The main actions on a page are at the top right. That’s where you can create a new bed, for example – or start other high-level tasks.

Actions that relate only to a single element (e.g. a specific bed) are usually found right next to it – as small, round buttons. They’re generally green.

If a button is red, that indicates an action that deletes or removes something.

Dialogues

Whenever additional data is shown, it appears in a dialogue window. The most important one is probably the plant detail view, which you’ll use often.

Depending on your device and screen size, the dialogue adapts automatically:

  • On small screens (e.g. smartphones) almost everything is shown in full screen.
  • If you want, you can put a dialogue into full screen manually – just click the small square at the top right (second button from the right).

If there’s an important action inside a dialogue, such as “Save”, you’ll also find it at the top right.

Help

To help you find your way around, we’ve built several kinds of help directly into grove:

Help boxes

The light green boxes appear in many places. They explain right there and then what an area does or how best to use it.

If you dismiss a box, it stays gone – but all the others remain visible until you close them too.

Contextual help

Maybe you’ve just arrived here via the help action? This feature recognises where you currently are in grove and takes you directly to the relevant part of the guide. You’ll find it at the top right – right next to the year selector.

Grove Chat

AI has helped us a lot recently and made it possible to achieve a great deal in limited time. We’re currently working on our own chatbot that answers your questions about the app. In the first version it helps you navigate grove itself. Later it should also be able to advise on row companion planting or provide information about plants.

You can also access the chat via the help menu at the top right.