Main screen
Market

Inspiration

Health apps often show us numbers without giving us a reason to care about them. We wanted to turn daily wellness goals into something personal, visual, and encouraging.

Healthy Garden grew from a simple idea: as you take care of yourself, you take care of your garden. Instead of relying on competition or guilt, we wanted to make healthier habits feel rewarding through small, visible moments of growth.

What it does

Healthy Garden connects everyday wellness goals with a peaceful virtual garden. Users work toward personal goals, earn gold, and spend it on flowers, trees, watering cans, and fertilizer.

Users can:

Follow personal goals based on recorded health totals using AI summarizer.
Choose where to plant and care for their growing garden.
Buy plants and supplies in the Market and track their remaining inventory.
Hear gentle sound effects when planting, watering, and fertilizing.
Return to saved progress after closing or refreshing the app.

The garden follows the local calendar, with daily care limits that reset automatically. Plants rest rather than die, keeping the experience encouraging.

A special Market reward also connects virtual growth to a future real-world benefit: after 30 days, users who meet the goal-completion and garden-health requirements unlock a placeholder sapling discount. The current discount is a demonstration only, with no real partner or purchase integration.

How we built it

We built the mobile app with React Native, Expo, and TypeScript, using illustrated SVG plants to create a calm garden experience.

We connected Supabase for anonymous authentication and health-data storage, and built an Apple Health integration for supported iPhone development builds. A separate sample mode lets people explore the app without connecting personal health data.

We kept garden rules separate from the interface so purchases, planting, daily care, and rewards could be tested independently. Garden progress and preferences use AsyncStorage, backed by localStorage on the web.

For sound effects, we created short synthesized clips using sine waveforms, smooth fades, and low-pass filters. A playback queue prevents overlapping sounds, while a saved mute preference gives users control.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was keeping the garden consistent across screens and sessions. Buying an item needed to update the balance and inventory immediately, while failed saves or repeated taps could not accidentally spend extra gold or consume extra supplies.

Another challenge was handling time correctly. We moved from manual day advancement to the user’s local calendar, accounting for midnight, returning to the app after sleep, and changes to the device clock.

Health data also required careful handling. Missing readings should not become invented values or completed goals, and sample data needed to stay separate from personal progress.

Sound design took iteration too. Our first effects sounded crackly, so we replaced sharper textures with softer waveforms and filtering.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of building a complete loop: work toward a goal, earn gold, plant something, and help it grow.

The garden supports choosing planting locations, buying supplies, tracking inventory, and enforcing daily care limits. Progress survives refreshes, and the Market reflects changes immediately.

We also built automated checks for purchases, persistence, daily rollover, goal rewards, and one-time discount claims—including repeated actions and failed saves.

Most importantly, we created an experience that feels gentle. The garden offers encouragement without punishing users for an imperfect day.

What we learned

We learned that a simple interface depends on careful engineering underneath. A single “Buy” or “Water” button involves validation, inventory updates, persistence, feedback, and error handling.

We also learned that wellness experiences need honest data handling. Clearly distinguishing missing readings, personal progress, and sample data is essential to earning trust.

Finally, we learned how much small sensory details matter. Consistent colors, readable progress, subtle sounds, and forgiving language all contribute to making an app feel welcoming.

What's next for Healthy Garden

Our next steps are to test the Apple Health experience on physical iPhones, refine goal personalization, and learn from people using the app over several weeks.

We also want to explore partnerships with nurseries or tree-planting organizations so the placeholder sapling reward could become a real benefit.

Our goal is to keep Healthy Garden simple and meaningful: a place where small, sustainable habits become something users can watch grow.