Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

We collect information you provide when you create an account, purchase access, or use the garden-planning tools. This can include your email address and password (stored as a cryptographic hash, not in plain text), and the garden details you save.

• Garden information such as your city and state, bed and container sizes, sunlight, plant selections, layouts, and notes.
• Purchase information such as checkout and payment references, payment status, amount, currency, and the email associated with the purchase. Stripe processes payment details; we do not receive or store your full payment card number.
• Information you enter in the public “What can I grow here?” tool is used in your browser to generate suggestions. That tool does not save your answers to a Little Yardstead account.

2. Location and gardening information

When you save a garden, we use its city and state to look up growing-season information. To provide that feature, the location may be sent to Open-Meteo for geocoding and historical weather information and, when available, a ZIP code may be sent to the USDA hardiness-zone lookup service at phzmapi.org. We store the resulting climate details, including coordinates, with the garden or in a shared location cache.

Location information is used to provide gardening suggestions and is not intended to identify your exact home address. Do not enter information you do not want used for these purposes.

3. How we use information

We use information to provide and maintain your account, save and display your garden plans, generate planting and climate guidance, process purchases, send account and transactional emails, respond to support requests, protect the Service, and meet legal obligations. We also use website analytics to understand how the Service is used and improve it.

4. Cookies and analytics

Little Yardstead uses an essential session cookie to keep you signed in. The cookie is configured as HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax, and is marked Secure in production. We also use Google Analytics, which may use cookies or similar identifiers and receive technical information about your browser and how you use the website. You can manage or clear cookies through your browser settings; disabling them may affect sign-in or other website features.

5. When we share information

We do not sell your personal information. We share information only as needed to provide the Service, complete your request, or meet legal and safety obligations. Service providers that may process information for us include:

• Stripe, for checkout and payment processing.
• Google Analytics, for website usage measurement.
• Open-Meteo and phzmapi.org, for location-based climate and hardiness-zone information.
• Resend, for transactional email, and our hosting and database providers, to operate the Service.

6. Retention and deletion

We keep account and garden information while it is needed to provide the Service and for legitimate operational, security, and legal purposes. Some records may need to be retained for accounting, fraud prevention, or legal compliance. Providers may retain information under their own policies.

If you begin checkout but do not complete it, your email address and password hash may remain in pending signup records while needed to complete or support that process.

You can delete your account from the Account page. Deleting your account removes the account and saved garden data associated with it from the Service. It cannot be undone and may remove access to your purchased tools. Copies in backups or records that must be retained may persist for a limited time or as required by law. For questions or requests about other information, use the contact information on the Little Yardstead website.

7. Security

We use reasonable measures to protect information, including hashing account passwords and protecting sign-in sessions. No internet transmission or storage system can be guaranteed completely secure. Please use a unique password and contact us if you believe your account has been accessed without permission.

8. Your choices and privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, or delete personal information, or to object to or limit certain processing. You can update some garden information in your account and delete your account from the Account page. For other privacy requests, contact us using the information provided on the Little Yardstead website. We may need to verify your request and may retain information where the law permits or requires it.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as the Service changes or as required by law. We will post the revised policy here and update its revision date. If a change materially affects how we handle information, we will take reasonable steps to notify you.

10. Contact

For questions or requests about privacy, please use the contact information provided on the Little Yardstead website.