Why I Built PetFlora: A Mission Born from a Vet Emergency
PetFlora is a UK plant toxicity checker for cat and dog owners. It provides instant safety information for over 3,000 common UK garden and house plants — including lilies, tulips, foxgloves and sago palms — to help prevent accidental pet poisoning.
Like most UK pet owners, I used to choose garden plants based on how they looked — not whether they were toxic to cats or dogs. That changed when one of our cats became seriously unwell. An emergency vet visit, an anxious night, and — thankfully — they pulled through. But the cause was never confirmed, and that uncertainty never left me.
After that, every trip to a garden centre came with a nagging worry: is this plant safe for my cats and dog? Could this be another lily, another foxglove, another plant I hadn't thought twice about?
The problem: no reliable UK pet-safe plant resource
When I searched for answers, I found the information was:
- Scattered across dozens of different websites with no single trusted source
- Written for the US market — using different plant names to those on UK garden centre labels
- Buried in complex veterinary manuals not written for everyday pet owners
- Impossible to search quickly while standing in a shop aisle or in a midnight emergency
The solution: instant plant safety at your fingertips
I built PetFlora to be the tool I wish I'd had. A dedicated database of over 3,000 UK garden and house plants — searchable by the common name, the Latin name, or exactly what's written on the label — that tells you one thing instantly: is this plant safe for your cat or dog?
No more piecing together answers from ten sources. No more US-centric results that don't match UK plant names. Just a clear answer in seconds.
Our mission
To make plant toxicity information accessible to every pet owner in the UK — free, fast, and clear enough to use in the moment you need it.