Glasshouse

Adiantum raddianum · Delta maidenhair fern

Windowsill, 25 min

A focus timer that grows things.

How it works

Choose how long, and begin.

Twenty five minutes, fifty, or seventy five. The clock runs while Glasshouse is open and stops if you switch away. That is the only rule.

Finish, and one plant grows.

A real species, chosen for you rather than by you, that grows in front of you over ten seconds. Longer sessions reach the rarer ones.

Pick a pot, and keep it.

Every plant is filed with its botanical name and the date, so your Glasshouse becomes a record of what you actually did with your time.

Nothing dies here

Other focus apps kill your tree when you get interrupted.

Glasshouse does not. Pick up your phone and the timer pauses. Come back when you can. Nothing withers, nothing is taken away, and nothing here is designed to make you feel worse about a day that got away from you.

Specimens

Every species is real, named, and comes with a few facts worth knowing. New ones arrive every month.

Pilea peperomioides

Chinese money plant

Windowsill

Bellis perennis

Common daisy

Windowsill

Dionaea muscipula

Venus flytrap

Garden

Curio rowleyanus

String of pearls

Garden

Dendrophylax lindenii

Ghost orchid

Expedition

Strongylodon macrobotrys

Jade vine

Expedition

On your phone

The whole app is three screens. Choose how long to work, watch the clock go down, and look at what you kept.

The Glasshouse home screen: three session lengths, Windowsill at 25 minutes, Garden at 50 and Expedition at 75, above a grid of collected plants.
Choosing a session
A session running: 18 minutes 24 seconds remaining, over a painting of a sunlit greenhouse, with Pause and End session.
A session running
One collected plant: a ghost orchid in a terracotta pot, above a card naming it Dendrophylax lindenii and dated.
One specimen

The list