EverGreen - for lives that keep flourishing

I'm turning healthy habits into living art for the elderly — a garden that flourishes when they take their meds, stay hydrated and active, bringing peace of mind and joy to them and their families.

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Inspiration

Many elderly people - like my father or my mother-in-law who are both in their 80ies - live alone today. Even though they are often still mentally and physically capable, they can easily forget to drink enough water, take their medication, or stay active, habits that are critical to staying healthy and independent.

We were frustrated by the existing solutions: hydration and medication tracking apps are typically tedious, clinical, and add no real joy or meaning. We wanted something that would transform self-care into a positive, uplifting experience, and also give families gentle visibility into how their loved ones are doing without intrusive phone calls or awkward daily check-ins. That’s how EverGreen was born.

What it does

EverGreen turns healthy daily habits into a beautiful digital garden. As elderly users track drinking water, taking their medication, and doing gentle physical or cognitive exercises, their garden grows and blooms: flowers appear for them to be placed in the garden and animals visit.

If these habits are neglected, the garden slowly starts to wilt, providing a gentle, visual reminder to take care of themselves. It’s not just about tracking data, it’s about growing together.

Family members can also link a tablet in their own home to display the garden, giving them peace of mind and a quiet way to stay connected.

How I built it

  • bolt.new
  • Midjourney
  • ChatGPT

I used bolt (obviously), starting with a prompt of what I wanted to build. Bolt created a beautiful app right away, but it was packed with buttons. I found my first two shots I had at the projects beautiful but not easy and intuitive enough for the target group 70+. So I gave bolt the image of my garden and explained that I did not want to see any visible buttons, but just the image. I honestly don't k now what bolt did, whether it used react, node.js (well, I guess so, but honestly don't know what these are). I managed to connect bolt to supabase and let it do all the things necessary to create a sign-up and databases to store the tracking stati of hydration, medication and exercices. I used Midjourney to create all images the garden (flowers, wilted flowers, animals, sun, cloud, the background garden)

Challenges I ran into

Coding without any techical background: I had no idea what bolt was telling me and just tried to solve problems and trouble shoot feeding it screenshots and asking ChatGPT for help. As the app kept growing, more problems kept asppearing which is why i kept it quite small as an MVP for the hackathon participation.

Designing for older adults: I underestimated how different UI needs to be: minimizing options on a screen, reducing text, adding clear icons, and avoiding overwhelming choices. I went with a visual elements to click on instead of buttons:

  • click on the sun to track your medication and get a sunflower
  • click on the cloud to track your hydration and get a flower
  • click on a butter fly to track your exercise and get an animal, e.g. a beautiful deer to place in your garden
  • See the cloud got darker? That is why you haven't had water during the last hours.
  • See the flowers started wilting? They are just as dehydrated as you must be. Have a glass of water.

Finding the right emotional tone: I wanted the garden to gently wilt, i.e. enough to motivate action, but never to cause guilt or sadness.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Creating an experience that brings beauty and creativity into health tracking, instead of dry reminders. Building a shared family view that fosters quiet connection and reassurance, without intrusive monitoring. Seeing early users smile as their garden grew, proving that health habits can be joyful, not just necessary. Nothing to actually being proud of, but maybe worth mentioning: Being not a techie, I was completely overwhelmed by the fact that bolt managed to allow drag and drop of plants. I had no idea this was even possible by simply telling bolt.

What I learned

Coding is possible, even if you are not a tech person. I'm in my 50s, a woman with a background as copy writer and I suddenly can create websites and apps. It's just wow. Simple isn’t easy. It takes real design discipline to remove complexity and create something truly effortless for elderly users. Emotional design matters just as much as functional design making sure our garden feels uplifting, never punishing. The smallest touches like a flower blooming or a gentle butterfly animation make a huge difference in engagement.

What's next for EverGreen - for lives that keep flourishing

Right now, users collect flowers when they track their hydration, sun flowers when they track their medication and animals when they track their exercices. While animals and sun flowers disappear overnight, flowers stay. In the future, I want to add new plants like bushes and trees users can trade flowers for after reaching a certain amount of flowers to make their garden even more interesting. In addition, I want to add new scenes users can choose from after maybe a month of taking care of their garden. They can choose if they want to move on to another garden or stay. Other gardens could be an oriental garden with palm trees and camels instead of flowers and forest animals, or seasonal gardens like a winterly garden in winter or a Halloween garden with pumpkins, black cat and halloween decoration in autumn.

Integrating an (elevenlabs) chatbot as a daily companion and motivator.

Exploring partnerships with clinics and family caregiver networks to bring EverGreen into more homes, so even more lives can keep flourishing.

Built With

  • and-api-creation.-we-also-used-bolt?s-frontend-framework-and-component-system-to-build-a-simple
  • bolt.new
  • canva
  • chatgpt
  • data-storage
  • midjourney
  • supabase
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