This is a thought; using the lists as the primary way of accomplishing the "This grew well for me" feature.
If the plant grows for you then you add it with the status of "Have". If it's something that you've grown before but no longer, add it with the status of "Used to have".
Then what we can do is write a system that hooks into it better. So when you're looking at a particular plant, instead of just giving you a link that says, "X people have this plant" we could instead actually program it to dig in, pull out the names and even generate a map like Sheryl was referencing.