Getting Started
You can go from sign-up to your first recorded garden action in under five minutes. Here is the flow.
Create your account
- Visit the Libre Grow home page and click Sign Up.
- Enter your name, email, and a password.
- Name your Hub — this is your garden group. It might be your name, your allotment site, or your community garden. You can invite others to your Hub later.
- You will land on your Hub dashboard with a default Workspace ready to go. Think of a Workspace as a growing season or a particular project (e.g. "2026 Summer Garden" or "Compost Trials").
Tour the dashboard
The dashboard is organised around two levels of tabs:
| Level | What you see |
|---|---|
| Hub tabs | Workspaces, Methods, People, Shop, Training |
| Workspace subtabs | Journal, Activities, Elements, Projects, Branches |
Click into your Workspace to see the subtabs. The Journal is your garden diary. Activities lists everything you have done. Elements shows every bed, plant, seed lot, and compost pile you are tracking.
Your first action: create a Structure element
A good first step is to map your garden site as a Structure element. This gives every future Activity a location to attach to.
- Open your Workspace and click the Elements tab.
- Click New Element and choose type Structure.
- Name it — for example, "Front Garden" or "Plot 14 — Community Allotment".
- Set its status to Active and save.
Now create a few Bed elements inside that structure (e.g. "Raised Bed A", "Polytunnel Border"). You can associate beds with the structure so they appear nested together.
Once you have created your Structure and Bed elements, open the interactive Site Map from the More menu. Switch to Place mode, select each element from the sidebar, and click on the map to record its exact position. The map also lets you draw boundaries, paths, and water features, and includes a sun path overlay to help plan planting.
With your site mapped, you are ready to record your first Activity. Head to the Activities tab, click New Activity, and try following a Method like No-Dig Garden Bed Setup or Soil pH Testing to get started.