Hortis
Company
Species360
Role
Senior Product Designer
Team
Timeline
2020–24
Website
Project Overview
Hortis is a modern plant records system for managing botanical data across public gardens, arboreta, and conservation institutions. It enables teams to record, map, and interpret plant collections with scientific accuracy and ease. I led the design from discovery through launch and into weekly iteration cycles, shaping a platform now used by over 150 organisations worldwide to make plant data more accessible, actionable, and vital to global conservation efforts.
The dashboard displays an overview of the collection as well as surfacing recent activity, IUCN Red List analysis, and provenance breakdown.
We simplified how geospatial data works in Hortis compared to market competitors, without losing advanced features.
Drawing location beds allows more control, visual organisation, and importantly enables very useful filters for finding and moving plant material.
We designed all components to work smoothly across desktop and mobile devices—botanists like to work outside : )
We scaled the capabilities of the data tables iterativley. We managed to surface more functionality with contextual actions, enabling users to do more without leaving this view. This includes batch actions used through the command bar—making the datatables very useful for heavy editing.
We designed the data tables so that botanists can create custom views, by choosing which columns to show/hide. We persisted their view preferences as well as any applied filters.
Impact
Since launch, Hortis has been adopted by over 150 organisations across 5 continents, including becoming the preferred plant records platform for BGANZ (Botanic Gardens Australia and New Zealand). The team continues to publish success stories from gardens that have transitioned to Hortis—including some moving from paper-based records for the first time. This widespread adoption confirms the success of our original strategy: to create an intuitive, accessible platform that serves the 80% of botanical institutions globally without professional plant records systems. Hortis is now helping these organisations digitise, manage, and share their collections with greater accuracy, efficiency, and impact.
Let's Connect
I’m always interested in exploring new opportunities.
Feel free to message me if you'd like to see my portfolio deck or to discuss a potential project or role.