Last updated: August 9, 2026
Cultivate is a home-garden planning app published by Iris Digital LLC. It keeps your data on your device, has no accounts, shows no ads, and runs no analytics or tracking. This page covers what stays on your phone and the handful of times the app asks an outside service for something.
Everything you create in Cultivate is saved on your device: your beds and layouts, plantings, tasks, watering and harvest records, journal notes, seed inventory, any photos you add, and your garden settings (its name, your ZIP code or chosen hardiness zone, and your frost dates). None of it is sent to us. There is no Cultivate server, so we never see it. Your USDA hardiness zone is looked up from a zone dataset built into the app, so setting your zone from a ZIP code happens entirely on your device.
This version of Cultivate does not sync to iCloud. Your garden lives on this device only. You can export the whole thing to a JSON file from Settings at any time and keep it wherever you like, or use it to move your garden to a new phone. That file is written by you, to a location you choose, and it never passes through us.
A few features need to look something up online. When they do, the app sends only what that lookup needs, and never your name or contact details, because it doesn't have them.
Weather. To show a forecast, rain-aware watering advice or a frost warning, an approximate latitude and longitude go to Open-Meteo. The coordinates are rounded to two decimal places (about a kilometer) before they leave the device, so they point at a neighborhood rather than an address. Nothing in the request identifies you.
Turning a ZIP code into coordinates. The weather features need a latitude and longitude. If you have not placed a bed on the map, the app asks Apple's geocoding service to convert the ZIP code you entered into approximate coordinates. That request goes to Apple, under Apple's privacy policy.
Searching for a place on the map. If you type an address or place name while positioning a bed, what you type is sent to Apple Maps to return suggestions. That request goes to Apple, under Apple's privacy policy.
These calls only happen when you actually use those features. Everything else in the app works offline. Each service handles its own requests under its own privacy policy, linked above.
Cultivate uses your device location only when you tap "Use my current location" to set your zone, or when you place a bed on the map. It uses that to work out your growing conditions and local weather, and it never goes to any server we run. You can decline location access entirely and type a ZIP code or pick your zone by hand instead; the whole app still works.
Photos you attach to plantings or journal entries stay on your device. They are never uploaded to us or to anyone else, and they are included only in backup files you export yourself.
If you turn on "Add tasks to Apple Reminders," Cultivate adds your tasks to a "Cultivate" list in your Reminders app. That happens on your device through Apple, under Apple's privacy policy.
Cultivate has no advertising, no analytics or marketing kits, and doesn't track you across other apps or websites. We don't sell or share your information, because we don't collect it. The companion-planting and crop-rotation guidance is all worked out on your device.
Cultivate is for a general audience. It needs no account and collects no personal data, so it doesn't knowingly collect anything from children.
Because your data lives on your device, deleting the app removes it. You can export your whole garden to a JSON file from Settings whenever you like, and delete individual items right in the app.
If this policy changes, we'll post the new version here with an updated date at the top.
Questions about your privacy or this policy? Email us at cultivate.app.support@gmail.com.