Manual › Getting started

Creating an account

Creating a free account, confirming your email address, changing your details, exporting your guide, deleting your account and supporting Bladwijzer.

You can identify plants without an account. With a free account you can keep what you find, create gardens and work together with others.

#Creating an account

1. Choose Log in at the top, then Create one, or go straight to Create an account.
2. Enter your email address and a password of at least 8 characters. From then on you log in with that address, and it is where notifications, invitations and password resets go. Each address belongs to one account.
3. Your name is optional. Under Username, Bladwijzer suggests one based on your email address, and you can see straight away whether a name is still free (3 to 30 characters: letters, numbers, full stop, - or _). Leave the field empty and we’ll make one for you. You can change it later under Account. It appears in the address of your public guide (/u/<name>); you log in with your email address.
4. Would you like the weekly email? Tick Send me the newsletter. What to do in the garden every month? Tick Send me “Garden jobs this month” (see Garden jobs this month). If you’re a tree surgeon, plant care specialist or landscape gardener, tick I’m a professional and choose your profession. After signing up, you fill in your business, service area and services (see For professionals).

#Confirming your email address

Straight after you sign up, you’ll get an email asking you to confirm your email address for Bladwijzer. Click the button in that email to confirm it. After that you’ll get the welcome email, and the newsletter and tips (if you want them) will be sent to this address.

• Didn’t get the email? Check your spam folder. Under Account, next to your email address, you’ll find Send the email again.
• The link works for 7 days.
• If you set a different address later, we’ll ask you to confirm that one too.

#Your profile

Settings has everything about your account, in this order: Statistics, Badges, Profile (your name, your username and when you joined), Notifications and email, Language, View (light, dark or like your device), Security, Privacy, Professional and admin, Log out or leave and at the bottom Your agreement with Bladwijzer. The buttons at the top take you straight to a part.

• Statistics: your days in a row, your species, observations and photos, your plants and gardens, your seeds, your wish list, your recipes and your badges. Tap a card to go there.
• Days in a row: on how many consecutive days you did something in Bladwijzer. That can be an observation, a plant in your garden, something in the log (such as watering), a measurement, a crop, a recipe or a challenge. The streak holds as long as you did something yesterday. Under This week a small flame marks each day you were active.
• Badges: your badges as levels. First find, Collector, Connoisseur and Tree expert, for example, are four levels for the species in your guide. For each achievement you see how far you are. Choose View all for all your badges.

#Your garden year

Under Your garden year (at the top of My guide, and in your settings) you see what you did in a year:

• your numbers: new species in your guide, observations, plants added to your garden, pruning, watering, sowing, harvests, photos, measurements, problems solved, work days, activities and badges;
• per month how active you were, with your busiest month;
• the species you saw for the first time and most often, what was new in your garden, what you harvested and which badges you earned.

The buttons at the top let you pick another year. At the bottom you can make an image to share (for Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook): choose Share or Save as image. It shows no places or photos, only your numbers and your name.

#Changing your details

Below your profile under Account you change your name, your username, your email address and your email preferences, and your password. To change your email address we ask for your password, and your old address gets a message about the change. After you set a new password, you’re logged out on your other devices.

#Choosing your language

Bladwijzer is available in Dutch, French and English. Choose your language with the globe icon at the top of every page, under Account or at the bottom of the page. Your choice is remembered on that device. The French version is at /fr and the English version at /en. This manual and the articles also exist in all three languages, and your emails arrive in the language you used last.

#Exporting and deleting

• Export: under Account › Share and export you can download your guide as a JSON file, or print it as a booklet.
• Delete: under Account › Delete account. Your observations, photos, gardens and requests are permanently deleted. Only your scans are kept, anonymously, for the statistics (without your name or photos, and with the location rounded to about a kilometre).

#The Bladwijzer Garden Report

Once a year Bladwijzer publishes a Garden Report with figures for all participating gardens together: which plants are most common, how many gardens have a native hedge, a rain barrel or a compost bin, what gardeners identified and how many challenges they completed, by region (Flanders, Brussels, Wallonia and the Netherlands). Figures like these help make wildlife-friendly gardening better known, in the press and with local councils.

• You are only counted if you switch it on yourself under Account › Privacy: tick My garden data may be counted anonymously in the annual Bladwijzer Garden Report. It is off by default and separate from the newsletter: it does not mean you get any emails. Below the tick box you see when you gave or withdrew consent.
• What counts: the species in your gardens and vegetable gardens (by their scientific name) and their form (such as a hedge), the vegetables you sow or plant that year, whether you have a rain barrel or a compost bin, the nature score, the species you identified with a photo or the key and saved, your completed challenges, your open garden days and the work days in your shared garden. Your region follows from where your garden is, never more precise.
• What never counts: your name, your email address, your address or where your garden is, your photos, notes, log, messages and your plants’ nicknames, and never your garden on its own. The report contains only totals, and a figure is only shown when it covers at least 10 gardens from 10 different gardeners.
• You can withdraw at any time with the same tick box: you are then no longer counted in new calculations and reports. A report that has already been published contains only totals and stays online.

The published report is at /en/tuinrapport/2026 (the year), for everyone. See also Privacy and security.

#Nearby: blocked, swapping and organisation

Account › Nearby lists who you blocked, with Unblock. If your account is suspended, or still new and therefore restricted for the first few days, you can read there until when and why. See Blocking, suspensions and new accounts.

Under Seed swapping you see what you share with people swapping nearby (nothing by default), and with Swap settings you choose whether to show your seed stock or wish list and whether you want a notification when there’s a match. See Swap settings.

#Organisation

Are you a food bank, community restaurant, social supermarket or school? Under Organisation, choose Request the organisation label: the type, the name, who you are (an address, a website or a contact person: only for the administrator) and the town. An administrator checks it; you get a notification when it’s confirmed, or not (with the reason).

Confirmed? Then your listings have a badge, your requests for harvest go to gardeners nearby (Ask for harvest), and you can reply to harvest that gardeners set aside for organisations. See Harvest for a food bank. A different type or name has to be confirmed again; with No longer an organisation the badge disappears and your listings stay.

#Your agreement with Bladwijzer

At the bottom of Settings you can see since when you have been using Bladwijzer and what you agreed to when you created your account: the terms of use and the privacy policy. Bladwijzer is free; you end the agreement by deleting your account (export your data first if you want to keep it).

#Supporting Bladwijzer

Bladwijzer is free and ad-free. If you’d like to help pay for the server, the maps and the recognition, choose Support Bladwijzer at the bottom of every page or on About Bladwijzer. You see whatever has been set up:

• Support via Buy Me a Coffee (at the top): Bladwijzer’s page on Buy Me a Coffee opens in a new window. You pay there by card. Bladwijzer loads nothing from Buy Me a Coffee: you only go to their site when you click the button.

• By bank transfer: choose an amount (€3, €5, €10 or €25, or Other amount; leave it empty and you enter it yourself later) and scan the QR code (Scan to pay) with your banking app. The beneficiary, amount and reference are then filled in for you; you confirm as with any transfer. If your banking app can’t read QR codes, copy the name, IBAN and reference instead (the button next to each copies it). You don’t need an extra account.

• With PayPal, if it’s shown: PayPal’s page opens in a new window.

• Your donation goes to a private individual, so it isn’t tax-deductible.

• You pay through Buy Me a Coffee, your own bank or PayPal. Bladwijzer itself doesn’t process any payments and keeps nothing about your donation. As with any bank transfer, the beneficiary sees your name, your account number and the reference; with Buy Me a Coffee and PayPal, whatever you enter there.

• If there’s no Support Bladwijzer button, donating isn’t possible (yet).

Updated on 2026-10-11