Interview with Local Landscape Architect, Hannah Shaw

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Hannah Shaw, a landscape architect renowned for her expertise in plant design. Alongside her partner Toby Gale, a tech-savvy gardener, they've embarked on an exciting venture, birthing Hota – a revolutionary gardening app aimed at simplifying plant selection for gardens. Their journey began at the RHS Urban Show in Manchester just a few weeks ago, where they officially launched their brainchild. Originally from Ealing, Hannah's roots deeply intertwine with the area, especially during her formative years and while pursuing her landscape architecture studies at Kingston University. Now, they're headquartered in South London, passionately immersed in the ongoing development of Hota, determined to redefine gardening experiences for enthusiasts worldwide.

What inspired you to create Hota, and how does it stand out from existing gardening apps?
Hota was inspired by our own garden renovation three years ago when we moved house and started the process of planning our planted beds. At the time, I was on maternity leave and also doing some freelance projects for friends who wanted planting design advice. I really enjoyed it, and one evening mentioned to Toby that I would love to do this kind of work all the time. Toby (who has a background in tech) jokingly mentioned tailored plant design would be a great app and we kept coming back to the idea and thought why not? We started speaking to friends who also had the same issue - "what should I plant in my garden?" We noticed that other gardening apps focus on plant ID and maintenance for what you already have, but we saw a gap in the market for people who don't know where to start with choosing the right plants for their space. Hota has been created to provide new gardeners with a source of inspiration and bespoke care advice for the users' tailored plant mix.

Could you walk us through the process of using Hota, from planning to maintenance?
Hota begins by collecting environmental information from the user. Information such as orientation and soil type are automatically identified from the phone's location (we call this Soil ID), it takes the bed size, and light levels are entered manually. The next stage is to select your favourite style or colour theme for your planted bed and then, based on your environment and style preferences, Hota will generate the perfect plant mix for your bed. The user can then tell Hota when a plant has been 'planted' and the app will generate bespoke maintenance advice for that plant throughout the seasons. Could you tell us about the collaborative process behind Hota's development, particularly with landscape design and horticulture experts? The process of developing Hota has taken over two years of collaboration with horticulture, geology, software engineers and plant design experts. My brother Tim Shaw is a Kew Gardens trained horticulturalist (currently head Gardener at Belcombe Court in Wiltshire), we worked with him to generate our curated plant database (our plants are hardy perennials which are easy to care for for new gardeners who are short on time) and the maintenance schedule for these plants.

What challenges did you face while developing Hota, and how did you overcome them? What do you envision for the future of Hota, and are there any upcoming features or expansions in the works?
The main challenge we've faced is the time it takes to design and build the software to realise our idea. It took six months to develop the prototype and then another two years to get version 1 to the App Store. With software / apps, you have to strike a balance between having enough features, and having enough still to do. We also want to listen to the community and make sure we're adding features that people actually want. So yes, you can expect plenty of updates rolling out throughout the coming seasons, these will be free for anyone that has already signed up.