I wish that one of the moderators or other persons experienced in making custom categories in the plant list would
1. Explain the usefulness of this, with examples
2. Run through step by step how it's done, and how to check that it has been done properly.

For example, I have been making a notes about each cultivar in terms of year added, where purchased, and hybridizer. But would there be advantages to making those things as custom categories, and would it be more efficient for future access?

I tried making "Hybridizer" or "Schreiners" as a custom category, and saved it, but when I went back to my lists management area, I did not see those categories anywhere. So then I deleted them both.

I hope someone can explain this for all of us.

Daisy,

My custom categories appear on the right side of the screen on my Plant List home page
https://garden.org/lists/view/...

I can answer your second question...
Go to your profile page


Scroll down to the Plant List Section and click on the words "there are ?? plants in..."


click on "Manage Categories"


Type in a Name for the new category and click on "Add Category". In this example, I will create a category called "Another Test"


You will see your new category added to the list. Click on "return to your lists control panel"


You will see your new categoey added to the list on the right of your Plant List Screen. Now we need to add plants to the list. In this example, I will add "Coral Bark Japanese Maple" to the "Another Test" category. Click on the edit icon for the plant you wish to add to your new category


Tick the category you wish to add the plant to and then click on "Save Your changes"


Click on Return to your list management area


You will now see 1 plant in your new category


In regard to the usefulness of categories, I think they are useful if you want to easily search for a group of plants that have something in common. I have created a category called "Planning to Order" and another called "Overseas Irises to Order" because I often see plants I wish to buy which aren't available because they are out of season, out of stock or not available in Australia yet.

Can the new category be used with regard to plants that have already been added to one's plant list?

Can the new category be applied to plants only in the Have list? Or only in the Wants list? If so, how do you make that sort of sub-category?

DaisyDo said:Can the new category be used with regard to plants that have already been added to one's plant list?

Yes. In the example above, the Coral Bark Japanese Maple was already in my plant list.
If you want to add plants to your custom category that aren't in your plant list, find the plant in the garden.org database, click on "Add this plant to your plant list", tick the custom category and then click on
"Add the plant".

DaisyDo said:Can the new category be applied to plants only in the Have list? Or only in the Wants list? If so, how do you make that sort of sub-category?

I can't find any way to make that sort of sub-category. I guess you could achieve the same result by only adding plants from the Have list or Want list into your custom category.

Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to make subcategories like you describe.

Thanks, Robin and Joshua.

for the acorns Daisy and Daphne

Hi Daisy: You could sort of fake subcategories. Say if you wanted to categorize Iris colors, you could have something like(and I am just using these categories as for instance):
Irises: Blue
Irises: Green
Irises: Red
And so on. I really use these custom categories so I can get lists of certain things, like what Irises bloomed in 2021

If you go to your profile, down towards the bottom, you can pull up your lists by your custom categories, so I can click on 2021 bloom and see everything that bloomed this year.

Elsa, yes, I've finally gotten the hang of this and have made some custom categories to sort out irises of various classes from my list, and also to remind me of the ones I most want.