Staff — May 12, 2016
Photo: iStock | Issam Khriji
Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the 2015 American Nurseryman Green Industry Guide and has been updated for accuracy.
As we’re moving further into the tech age, mobile access to information is critical. We’ve compiled a list of apps that are useful for day-to-day activities.
Southeast Early Detection Network
With this app, the user is able to identify and report invasive plants, animals, insects and plant pathogens in the Southeastern United States.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod
Touch Cost: Free
SBI Wireless Sales
This app allows the user to speed up checkouts without large hardware investments. It scans product bar codes or signs to quickly create sales, pick existing customer or add a new one on the fly, suspend the sale to any other user at the register or on another wireless device, and complete the sale.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
BeeSmart Pollinator Garden
This app lists plants for pollinators and can be searched by pollinators, soils, bloom color, sun to shade requirements
and plant type.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android
Cost: Free
SoilWeb
This app offers the user USDA soil survey information. It works with the phone’s GPS receiver to identify soil 
properties anywhere in the lower 48 states with cell phone coverage.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
Cost: Free
Landscape & Garden Calculators
With hardscape, softscape, business, lawn, measurement and garden calculators, this app is great for the pro 
landscaper or contractor.
Compatible with: Android
Cost: $3.99
OAN Nursery Map
This map was developed to replace current paper maps. It allows the user to find nearby locations and navigation. 
Users can plan a route, navigate to a destination, find closest location to current location, search by name or tap to call or send email.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
Cost: $4.99
Landscaper’s Companion for iPad—Plant & Referencing Guide
This app features a reference guide to all plants including trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials. The user can create projects for managing client plant lists, add their own images and plants, plus keep notes on plants.
Compatible with: iPad, Desktops
Cost: $4.99
Landscaper’s Companion
Plant names and descriptions are available offline and may be browsed by different topics: annuals, bulbs, perennials. The professional version allows users to add their own photos and to sync plants with multiple devices.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Cost: $4.99, $9.99 for professional version
Home Outside Palette
This app features 27 palettes of hand-drawn elements, sample designs, 15 different background colors and the ability to import an image as a background. There are different layers for the design, and the user is able to lock/unlock and make them visible or invisible. Friends can also
edit one another’s designs and email them back and forth.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
Cost: Free, in app purchases $14.99
IPMPro
This app will streamline pest management decision-making and employee training, and make complying with state pesticide recordkeeping regulations easy. It provides major pest and cultural practices references at the fingertips with automatic, text-like alerts for time-sensitive pest issues and cultural practices. It contains images, pest lifecycle and management options for major pests of woody plants.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
Cost: $24.99
Leafsnap
This app features visual recognition software to help identify tree species from photographs of their leaves. It currently includes trees of the Northeast.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Cost: Free
Plantifier
A crowdsourced plant recognition tool, it allows the user to upload a photo of an unknown plant. The MyGarden.org 
community behind it will try to recognize it and give an answer to the user as soon as possible.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Android Cost: Free
The Plant Doctor
This app provides interactive diagnoses for plant disease in gardens, landscapes, nurseries and farms. It collects 
user-supplied information about the problem and sends it to a professional plant pathologist. The user then receives live communications from the pathologist.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Cost: $2.99
Bugs and Insects Expanded Edition
The user is able to look through more than 5,000 images of bugs and insects, as well as find basic information and some interesting facts. An Internet connection is not required.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Cost: $.99
Botanical Terms – A Comprehensive Glossary
With a database of hundreds of botanical terms including plant structure, growth, reproduction and metabolism terms, this app doesn’t require an Internet connection. It features fast search results and an intuitive interface.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Cost: $1.99
Audubon Wildflowers
There are more than 1,900 North American wildflowers available on this app, with range maps and descriptions. The
user is able to search by color, region, shape and other advanced search options.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Cost: $4.99
FlowerPedia
This comprehensive app features over 2,800 photos of flowers, the ability to share the location of flowers with friends and searching by country and state. It contains information about 830 genera from 140 plant families. No Internet connection is required.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch
Cost: $4.99
iGarden USA
Users are able to find planting instructions specific to climate zone, add custom seed information with photos, find known pests and remedies for herbs, track when something is planted and estimate the remaining time before harvest. A zone map is also available.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
Cost: $4.99
The Armitage App: Greatest Perennials & Annuals
Users are able to search all plants or use the filter in the app to search for annuals, perennials or find plants that
grow in the sun, shade or for foliage or flowers.
Compatible with: iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android
Cost: $4.99