Support and frequently asked questions

HERNES is a garden app for iOS and Android for home gardeners and smallholders. It lets you keep track of your gardens, areas, plants, animals and garden tasks and see the weather and frost and storm warnings for your garden’s location.

The Explorer plan is free. Gardener costs €4.99 a month or €49.99 a year, and Farmer €12.99 a month or €129.99 a year. You buy the subscription through the App Store or Google Play, and the store shows the final price before you buy.

Yes. You can try the paid plans free for 30 days, once in total: choose Gardener or Farmer. During the trial you can move from Gardener to Farmer; the trial keeps its end date. The app offers a trial when you choose an interest or feature that belongs to a paid plan.

You cancel through the store: on iPhone, Settings → your name → Subscriptions; on Android, Google Play → profile → Payments and subscriptions → Subscriptions. The subscription stays active until the end of the paid period. Deleting your HERNES account does not cancel it.

Your data stays and HERNES goes back to the free Explorer plan. Everything above the Explorer limits stays visible and can be deleted, but you can’t edit it or add more. You can still mark garden tasks done and weather warnings keep working.

There is no exact date yet. Sign up as a beta tester on the home page and we will let you know when you can try the app.

Yes. Managing gardens, plants, animals and tasks, the weather forecast and weather alerts work everywhere. Seed packet scanning is currently only for seeds sold in Estonia, and the Estonian Environment Agency’s official warnings are shown for gardens in Estonia.

No. HERNES needs an internet connection to save and load your data. Photos kept on your phone are visible without internet.

Yes, if you allow them on your phone. HERNES sends weather alerts (frost, storm, heavy rain, heat, dry spell), a morning summary of today’s tasks, shared garden events (e.g. you got a task) and plan messages. You choose the time of the weather alerts and the task summary in Settings, and can switch each kind off. Urgent weather alerts come at once, also at night.

The location is needed to show the weather forecast and weather alerts for your garden. The app reads your location only once, when you tap “Use my current location” while adding or editing a garden, and does not track you. Instead you can search for the place by name. We store the location only to about 2 km. The location is optional, but without it you won’t see the garden’s weather.

Open the barcode scanner in the app and point the camera at the barcode (EAN) on the seed packet. If the seed is in the catalogue, you see the variety details and can add it to your plants. The catalogue covers most seeds sold in Estonia; if a code is not there yet or the packet is from abroad, photograph the packet: the app reads the packet text and fills in the plant’s details for you to check. Packet readings per month: 5 on Explorer, 30 on Gardener and 100 on Farmer.

Photos of plants, animals and areas stay on your phone by default. In Settings you can turn on photo backup: your photos are then uploaded to the cloud so you can see them on another device. On the Explorer plan the backup holds 25 photos; on paid plans backup is on by default with no limit. Your profile photo, garden cover photo and garden gallery are always uploaded to the cloud. The privacy policy explains this in more detail.

HERNES is available in Estonian and English. You can choose the language in the app settings.

Yes. With the Gardener plan you can invite 2 editors to a garden and with the Farmer plan 10: open the garden and tap “Invite a member”. Joining is free, also on the free plan. Gardens are always private by default; public gardens, for example community gardens, are coming later.

In the app, open Settings, choose Account settings and Delete account, and confirm with your password. Without the app, you can request deletion by emailing privacy@hernes.app. If you have a paid subscription, cancel it first in the App Store or Google Play, because deleting your account does not end it. Full instructions are at hernes.app/en/delete-account.