Show HN: Indigene – Native plants for where you stand

112 pointsolivierlacan3 days ago40 commentsView on HN

Back when I lived in Central Florida, it took me years to learn what native plants could benefit wildlife and the local ecosystem as I slowly replaced parts of my yard to make it more resilient to drought. After moving to Seattle a few years ago, I had to start all of that from scratch. LLMs made the process a bit easier but I still had to routinely ask the same kinds of questions over and over, despite being far more familiar with native plants these days and leaning more on native plant societies and botany resources like Doug Tallamy and Joey Santore whose excellent Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't site was recently posted here[1].

A good friend was visiting from Orlando over the summer and told me she was struggling to decide what to plant in her own yard despite her landlord being ok with it. That was enough of an excuse for me to kick off work on Indigene, which is aimed at giving folks just-in-time knowledge about what to plant based on their locale, sun exposure, soil conditions, and their own ecosystem support goals.

Candidly, as many of us have, I've also leaned heavily on LLMs (mostly Claude here) to bring this to life. Largely to avoid saying demonstrably false things, which might be an absurd statement. You can find the GitHub repository[2] a wild array of open data sources I've dug out and cross-referenced to ensure mistakes and hallucinations are unlikely to survive for long. But given today's Indigenous Peoples Day I figured it was past time I shared the projects and invited more scrutiny.

Being the Keep a Changelog guy, you can bet it has extensive release notes[3] generated from the project changelog. Those are also parsed into feature-specific guides so each also lists relevant recent updates.

Lastly, I put together a post[5] that goes into a bit more detail on the story of the project and what I've learned along the way.

I really, really hope people here (and beyond) find it as useful and enlightening as I do.

PS: before it comes up, all the LLM usage for the project is documented[6] and used as warning system in every PR but I think there's a lot more I can do to further reduce it

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192566

[2]: https://github.com/olivierlacan/indigene

[3]: https://indigene.app/release-notes/

[4]: https://indigene.app/guide/

[5]: https://constantvariable.net/blog/2026/indigene-native-plant...

[6]: https://indigene.app/llm/

RobotToaster1 day ago

I couldn't find an option to change the soil type, since it guessed mine very incorrectly.

olivierlacan10 hours ago

Once you got to results you mean? I just made the numbered steps at the top of the spot result pages clickable so you can use them to navigate back to soil but that may not be obvious. So thanks for the feedback!

ChrisMarshallNY23 hours ago

Very nice! My wife is very much into this, and I'll share it with her.

olivierlacan10 hours ago

Thank you for that! Curious what feedback you get from her.

seszett23 hours ago

It might handle different locations a bit differently, but whichever option I use (feed insects, easy care, soak up rain, etc) it basically suggests me to just leave the most common weeds grow to end up with a heath covered in brambles/wild roses/various thorny weeds.

Which is logical I guess, if the goal is just to have native plants that grow naturally here. But I suspect few people are looking for this without any consideration to the ornamental and recreational qualities of the plants.

4728284711 hours ago

In fact, that’s how I garden: I spray seeds and random plants and see what sticks. That’s literally all I do in terms of interfering; the rest I leave to nature. I don’t understand “weed” as terminology in that context; I am not a farmer, I don’t aim for specific “produce”.

I consider it highly recreational to have transformed the previously dead “garden” and “lawn“ with “colorful one-year flowers” and the need to artificially water and all that strange “active gardening“ maintenance but absolutely no insects and no smells into a beautiful wild garden with buzzing insect life and zero artificial watering in only a few years time. The smell of the different herbs and berries alone is doing much for my quality of life. And the flowers that made it are much more “beautiful” and year-round colorful than the weird catalog almost-plastic tulips that the previous tenant replanted each year to have a few weeks of color.

olivierlacan9 hours ago

Your end goal focus is fine and I'm glad it improves your quality of life. Same here whether I focus on edibles or natives in my own garden. But I'd caution you about the "throw random seeds" approach, unless you've sourced those seeds and aren't using retail seed package "for pollinators". Those are notorious for frequently including invasive species.

A few examples among many similar studies:

https://neobiota.pensoft.net/article_preview.php?id=118480

https://www.washington.edu/news/2002/04/18/wildflower-seed-m...

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2016/...

https://wssa.net/2017/08/make-sure-your-seed-mix-is-tested-f...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8176916/

"See what sticks" is inherently biased toward fast spreaders that will outcompete and outspread other plants regardless of their ecosystem services. Even if they're natives.

But like the parent comment, I can't tell you that your own enjoyment isn't warranted in your own garden. The whole point of Indigene is to try and contribute to tilting the balance a bit more into being more aware and focused on the ecosystem benefits of what you plant or don't plant.

olivierlacan10 hours ago

You might have missed filters on the result page that specifically let you exclude plants that spread (width or height), thorns, and even stingers. Those can help you avoid what you describe, but they may not be obvious. Maybe I need to make those more obvious? Or default to them?

I think it's fine to have a human-centered mindset although the point of Indigene is to challenge that a bit and re-center the focus on the ecosystem services these plant provide. Ornamental and recreational qualities of a plant don't have zero value, but they definitely don't have 10 times the value of its ecosystem services.

But like everything, since the site is for humans, I do need to find a balance there. So point taken.

PS: swiftcoder and pavel_lishin had similar feedback about garden goals although with a different focus