GardenBinder Guides

From Gardenize to GardenBinder: Importing Your Journal

Mea Cara · October 13, 2026 · 5 min read

Closed garden journal on a weathered bench beside a perennial border of coneflowers and daisies marked with wooden stakes

If you are coming from Gardenize, you already know what a garden journal is for. It has plants, areas, and events — the three pieces that make a record more than a list — and it has been doing this longer than most. Gardeners who leave it usually do so for reasons of feel rather than function: the seasonal features they wanted, the photo journal they wished was a story, a price that crept, or simply wanting the garden and the records in one place with the map.

Whatever the reason, the good news is that Gardenize is one of the few apps that will hand you your data. This guide is about using that.

What Gardenize does well

Structure. Plants, areas, and events link to each other, and the event log with photos is a genuine journal. It has been around long enough to be stable, it works on web and phone, and its plant database is decent. Respect is due.

What exports, and how

As of this writing, Gardenize offers an export of your data, and our understanding is that it sits behind the paid tier. Menus move; if you cannot find it, search their help pages for "export" before assuming it is gone. What comes out is a spreadsheet-shaped file — one row per plant, with the columns you filled in — and your photos are downloadable separately from the app.

If you are on the free tier and the export is out of reach, you are not stuck: the screenshot and pasted-list routes below work for Gardenize exactly as they do for apps with no export at all.

Step by step: the spreadsheet route

Export from Gardenize and save the file somewhere you can find it. A CSV is ideal; an Excel file is fine too. If the export is a PDF, open it, copy the plant names, and use the pasted-list route instead.
Open GardenBinder → Settings → Bring your garden in → Spreadsheet. Choose the file. GardenBinder reads the header row and matches columns automatically: name, scientific or Latin name, variety or cultivar, type, notes, sun or light, water, the planted date, quantity, and any column that looks like a location or an area.
Review the drafts. Every row becomes a plant draft. Dates in any common format are recognised, including the odd number Excel sometimes stores instead of a date. A location column lands in the plant's notes so you can place the plant properly in the next step.
Save, then rebuild your areas. Create your areas and beds in GardenBinder (Areas & Beds), then open each imported plant and put it where it belongs. With a location in the notes this is quick.

The spreadsheet route does not use AI and does not count against any allowance. If you would like care profiles written for plants your export lacked details for, paste the names into the list box instead and the AI fills in kind, sun, water, and a starting care rhythm — the first ten AI imports are free on the Free plan.

What about the events and photos?

Honest answer: journal entries do not import as journal entries. A plant export is a plant export. Two things soften that.

First, the dates that matter most — planted, first bloom, first harvest — can go into the plant record directly, and the planted date comes over in the spreadsheet if it was there. Second, GardenBinder's journal is fast to write in, and a season of old photos can be added to the plants they belong to from your camera roll, dated by the photo. Most people find that thirty minutes with last year's photos covers the memories they actually wanted to keep, and the rest were never going to be re-read.

If you have years of detailed events, keep the Gardenize export somewhere safe. A spreadsheet is a durable archive.

What to check after the import

Plant type. Gardenize's categories mostly fold into GardenBinder's kinds (vegetable, herb, shrub, perennial, tree, and so on). Anything it could not place is left blank rather than guessed — set it, because the seasonal features rely on it.
Varieties. If your export put "Tomato, Brandywine" in one cell, the name is the whole thing. Split it into name and variety so seed and harvest records can tell tomatoes apart.
Areas. Names in a location column are text, not links, until you place the plant. Do this once and every future journal entry for that plant knows where it happened.
Duplicates. If you import the same file twice, the review step flags the repeats. Untick them.

On the other side

What changes is less the data than what the app does with it. A journal entry that links to a plant builds that plant's history; a harvest note rolls up into a season's total; the map puts the beds where they really are; and the app notices first blooms, anniversaries, and the end of a season without being asked. Your journal habits carry straight over. The comparison of garden journal apps is frank about where Gardenize still leads, and GardenBinder is free to start, with a full export of your own any time you want it back out.

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