For club officers

Your club meets once a month.
The trees grow every day.

Three things a club wants and cannot easily give: somewhere trees change hands safely, somewhere members talk between meetings, and a reason for people to make their trees better. It is free, and it costs your volunteers no work.

Talk to us about your club

The gap between meetings

Most clubs run on a monthly meeting, a newsletter and a show once a year. Between those, a member who repots a tree, wires a branch or finally solves a problem they have had for three seasons has nowhere to put it except a phone camera roll.

Newer members feel that most. They are the ones who need to see what other people's trees actually look like six months in, and they are the ones a club most often loses in the first year.

What your club gets

Trees change hands inside the club

Members list trees for sale with the distance shown on every listing, so people know what they can actually drive to and collect. Material moves between growers who will look after it instead of to a stranger on an auction site — and the money stays inside your club.

Members talk between meetings

A question about a dying juniper does not wait three weeks for the next meeting. Members post what they are working on, comment on each other's trees, and message directly. The people who need this most are the newest ones — the members a club most often loses in the first year.

Comparison makes people better

Members compare trees of the same species side by side and pick the stronger one. Names are hidden, so it is a judgement about a tree rather than about a person. Seeing your maple next to four others — and having to admit one of them is better — does more for a grower than any amount of encouragement. That is the job a club exists to do, and it runs every day rather than once a year at the show.

And the club's own record

Your shows and standings

Who exhibited, what won, and the standings that come out of it.

Awards on the tree

Recorded against the tree that won, and it stays there even if the tree changes hands.

A roster of growers

So a beginner can find the member who grows the species they just bought.

Take it to your members

Deciding is the easy part. Telling forty people is where this usually stalls, so here is the telling, already written.

A one-page flyer for the meeting table

What the app does, with QR codes for the App Store and the Android tester list. This is the one made for Badger Bonsai Society, so it carries their name — email us and we will make the same thing with yours on it.

Open the flyer (PDF)

And an email you can send as it is, once you have put your club's name and your own in the two brackets.

Draft email to your members

For the past few months I've been building Tiny Tree Club, an app for our club. https://www.tinytreeclub.com/

It keeps a record of every tree you own — photos, species, notes — logs the care you give each one, shows a feed of what other members are growing, and lets you buy/sell/trade within the club. It's free, there are no ads, and [YOUR CLUB] is one of the founding clubs.

ON IPHONE OR IPAD — IT'S LIVE NOW

Download it here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tiny-tree-club/id6758886683

Or search "Tiny Tree Club" in the App Store. You sign in with your email address, so there's no password to remember.

ON ANDROID — WE NEED A HAND

The app isn't on the Play Store yet. Google won't let it be published until 12 people have installed it and used it for 14 days straight. If you have an Android phone, here's how to help:

1. Email hello@tinytreeclub.com with the Gmail address on your phone. Each tester has to be added by hand before the sign-up link will work — this step can't be skipped.

2. You'll get the link back. Tap it, hit "Become a tester", then install from the Play Store.

3. Open the app every few days for two weeks. This is the part that really matters. Google checks that testers actually use the app — an install that sits untouched doesn't count toward the 12.

That last step is honestly the only thing standing between this app and a public launch, so if you're an Android user we'd be grateful for the two minutes.

Happy to set it up on your phone at the next meetup — just grab me.

And as you use it, please send any feedback. There's every chance something doesn't work right, or there's something you'd like it to do. Say so and it gets better.

[YOUR NAME]
hello@tinytreeclub.com · tinytreeclub.com

What it costs your volunteers

Nothing

to the club and nothing to members. There is no paid tier waiting behind this.

No data entry

Members add their own trees and photos. Nobody has to build a directory or maintain a list.

No admin

Send us your show results and we record them for you. There is no officer console to learn, because there is no officer console — we would rather do it by hand than hand a volunteer a second job.

Where we actually are

One club uses this today. The iPhone app is in the App Store; Android is still in invite-only testing. If you are looking for something every club in the country already uses, this is not it yet.

What that means for an early club is that the things you ask for get built. The features here exist because one club's members asked for them — the show standings, the awards on the tree, the distance on a listing.