About Growable Ground
Every piece of ground has potential.
Our job is to help you see it.
See what your land can growSomewhere right now, someone is standing in their yard wondering what to plant. They've been to the garden center. They've read the seed packets. They're still guessing — because what would actually tell them is buried in a federal database they've never heard of.
Growers don't fail for lack of dedication. They fail because the wrong crop met the wrong soil and nothing said so in advance. So we went and got the data — soil, climate, sun, flood risk, contamination — and scored it against one address: yours.
The record was always public. What we added is the reading of it — on your ground, at your address.
Our vision
A world where no grower has to guess.
Farms that don't fail in their first years. Gardens that thrive instead of struggling. Ground written off as worthless, brought back — year by year, amendment by amendment.
By the numbers
Plant species scored
1,085
USDA PLANTS + research databases
Federal data products
20+
From 14 agencies: USDA, EPA, NOAA, USGS, FEMA...
State + county parcel sources
621+
50 states + DC. Auto-parcel where states publish; draw anywhere else.
What we believe
Truth before comfort
Every reading we publish names its source, and we show you which. Where a reading could not be taken, we withhold it — your report and its PDF leave the line out and say what is missing, instead of printing a number that looks plausible. We would rather hand you a gap than a guess.
Encouragement over limitation
Poor drainage, low pH, a short season — starting points, not verdicts. Your report tells you what its constraints are whether you pay us or not. A trial or a subscription is what turns those constraints into a plan: the amendment path, and the order to work it in. We never just say no.
Access as a right
This data was collected with public dollars. The public record of your ground stays free to look at — on your report, at your address: buildings, soil, flood, wetlands, conservation, impervious surface, topography, contamination points. We charge for what we do with the record: the scoring, the interpretation, the amendment roadmap, the plant matching. A first-generation farmer and a seasoned consultant pay the same price for the same intelligence.
Precision at scale
One path, run at your address. Where a state publishes its parcels we snap to yours; everywhere else you draw the boundary — and the same path runs on either one. Coverage differs from state to state because the public record does, and the report names the sources it actually used.
Interpret, don't hide
A number on its own is not an answer. "Drainage class: somewhat poorly drained" is a fact; "your soil holds water longer than most — blueberries love this, tomatoes may want raised beds" is what you came for. Turning the first into the second is the work, and the work is what a trial or a subscription pays for.
Meet Gnorman
You'll find him in chat, and on the screen while your report runs. He turns up on every page that asks you something — a working land steward with a PhD's worth of formality and a neighbor's worth of warmth. He doesn't talk much. When he does, there's something worth knowing.
He is in tune with Mother Earth. "If you listen closely enough, she will actually tell you what she needs."
The ladybug
A ladybug does not turn up because a garden is perfect. She turns up because there are aphids. She is the one insect almost everybody is glad to see anyway — because wherever she lands, the ground is better after her than before.
That is why she is our mark. Gnorman is the guidance voice on this platform; the ladybug is the data voice. He talks. She marks the reading.
When your address comes back with nothing on the federal record, she is the biggest thing on the card — a clean read is worth showing plainly. When the record has something on it, she steps back and the finding takes the middle of the page. She is on your side in both directions.
She is not a certificate. No national database can promise your land is clean, and we say so on the card itself, not only here. What she means is smaller, and more useful: somebody went and looked, and this is what was there.
Look closely at Gnorman and she is usually on him somewhere — the hat brim, a boot. They share a world.
See what your land can grow
Enter your address. We score 1,085 plants against your exact soil, sun and climate, screen the contamination record around you — and show you what your land wants to grow, and why.
Three things about your exact spot that zone averages miss:
We read public map data for this spot — soil, climate, flood, and parcel records. How we handle your address.
25+ data sources analyzed in seconds
What this is not
Growable Ground is not a replacement for a soil test, a site survey, or your local Cooperative Extension office. It's a planning tool built on the best publicly available data, for decisions you make before you start digging. For commercial operations or regulatory compliance, consult a professional.
Run a community garden, extension program, or land trust? See our partner program →
Growable Ground LLC -- Massachusetts -- March 2026 -- US Patent Applications No. 64/013,215 and No. 64/055,547