Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of The Social Gardener, including our website, applications and related services (together, the “Service”).

The Social Gardener is operated by Carothers Ltd, registered in England under company number 15065138, with its registered office at 71-75 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London, United Kingdom, WC2H 9JQ (“The Social Gardener”, “we”, “us” or “our”).

By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. Please read them together with our Privacy Policy.

1. What The Social Gardener does

The Social Gardener is a personal relationship-management service designed to help you be more intentional about the relationships that matter to you.

Depending on the features you choose to use, the Service may help you:

• build and organise a private relationship map;
• connect information from sources such as your contacts, calendar and email;
• record your own notes and memories about people and relationships;
• identify relationships you may wish to sustain, revive, deepen or otherwise give attention to;
• prepare for conversations and meetings;
• receive reminders, suggestions, summaries and other AI-generated assistance.

The Social Gardener is intended to assist your judgement, not replace it. Relationships are complex, and suggestions generated by the Service may be incomplete, inaccurate or inappropriate to a particular situation.

You remain responsible for deciding whether and how to act on any suggestion made by the Service.

2. Your account

You must be at least 18 years old to create a Social Gardener account.

You are responsible for keeping your account credentials secure and for activity carried out through your account. Please tell us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

You must provide accurate information when creating your account and keep material account information reasonably up to date.

Your account is personal to you. You must not sell, transfer or give another person access to it without our permission.

3. Connecting your accounts and importing information

You may choose to connect third-party services such as Google Contacts, Google Calendar or Gmail, or to upload other information to The Social Gardener.

You decide which connections to authorise. Where possible, we will explain the permissions we are requesting and why we need them.

By connecting an account or supplying information, you instruct us to access and process that information so that we can provide the features you have requested.

You should only connect accounts that you are entitled to access and should use The Social Gardener in a lawful and responsible way.

You can disconnect supported third-party accounts. Disconnecting an account may prevent some features from working and does not necessarily delete information that has already been incorporated into your Social Gardener account. Our Privacy Policy explains how retained information can be deleted.

Third-party services are controlled by their respective providers. We are not responsible for changes, interruptions or restrictions imposed by those providers.

4. Information about other people

The nature of The Social Gardener means that your account may contain information about other people: for example, their name, contact details, your communications with them, meetings you have attended together, information you remember about them, or your assessment of your relationship.

Please use this capability responsibly.

You must not use The Social Gardener to unlawfully monitor, profile, harass or discriminate against another person, or to collect information that you have no legitimate reason to hold.

The Social Gardener is designed as a private tool for helping you manage your own relationships. It is not designed as a surveillance system, a data-broker database or a means of building profiles of people for unrelated commercial purposes.

Our Privacy Policy explains in more detail how we process personal information, including information about people who are not themselves Social Gardener users.

5. Your information remains yours

You retain any rights you have in the information, notes, documents and other content you provide to the Service (“Your Content”).

You give us permission to process Your Content only to the extent reasonably necessary to provide, maintain, secure and support the Service and the features you choose to use, and as otherwise described in our Privacy Policy.

This permission includes allowing our carefully selected service providers to process information on our behalf where this is necessary to provide the Service.

We do not acquire ownership of your contact book, emails, calendar, relationship notes or other imported personal information simply because you use The Social Gardener.

How long we retain information, how you can delete it and how we protect it are explained in our Privacy Policy.

6. AI-generated information and inferences

The Social Gardener uses artificial intelligence and other automated systems.

These systems may summarise information, identify possible connections or patterns, suggest priorities, estimate the state of a relationship, propose questions or conversation topics, or make other recommendations.

AI-generated information is not necessarily factual. In particular, an inference about another person or about the state of a relationship should not be treated as an established fact simply because The Social Gardener has generated it.

You should use your own knowledge and judgement before relying on important suggestions or acting on them.

We may change the models, methods and service providers used to provide AI features over time. Our Privacy Policy explains how personal information is handled when AI systems and their providers are involved.

7. Acceptable use

You must not use the Service to break the law, infringe another person's rights, gain unauthorised access to accounts or systems, distribute malware, send spam or unsolicited mass communications, stalk or harass someone, or deliberately interfere with the Service.

You must also not attempt to reverse engineer, circumvent security measures, scrape the Service at scale, resell access to the Service without our permission, or use automated methods to place unreasonable demands on our systems.

We may restrict or suspend access where we reasonably believe this is necessary to protect users, other people, our systems or the integrity of the Service. Where appropriate, we will explain what has happened and provide an opportunity to resolve the issue.

8. Early-access and experimental features

Some Social Gardener features may be described as beta, experimental or early access.

These features may change substantially, be unavailable from time to time, or be withdrawn if they do not work as intended.

We will use reasonable care and skill in providing the Service, including early-access features. However, participation in an early-access programme means that you should expect more changes and occasional problems than you would from a mature product.

If we make a material change that significantly disadvantages you, we will give reasonable notice where practicable.

9. Paid plans, trials and subscriptions

Some parts of The Social Gardener may be free and others may require payment.

Before you purchase a paid plan, we will show you the price, billing frequency, what is included, whether the subscription renews automatically, and any applicable trial or introductory period.

If you take out a recurring subscription, you authorise us or our payment provider to take the applicable subscription payment at each renewal until you cancel.

You may cancel a recurring subscription using the cancellation method we make available. Unless we tell you otherwise when you purchase, cancellation prevents future renewal and you may continue to use the paid Service until the end of the period you have already paid for.

If we change the price of a recurring subscription, we will give you reasonable advance notice and explain when the new price will take effect.

Nothing in these Terms limits any statutory cancellation, refund or other consumer rights that apply to you. Where UK law gives you a cooling-off or cancellation right, we will provide the information and process required by law.

10. Our intellectual property

The Service itself — including its software, design, branding, underlying methods and content created by us — belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property law.

These Terms give you permission to use the Service; they do not transfer ownership of the Service to you.

You may use outputs generated specifically for you by the Service for your own personal or business purposes, subject to any rights that other people may have in underlying material.

AI-generated outputs may not be unique, and another user may receive similar output.

If you voluntarily give us feedback or suggestions about The Social Gardener, you agree that we may use that feedback to develop and improve the Service without being required to compensate you.

11. Privacy and security

Protecting the private nature of relationship information is fundamental to the design of The Social Gardener.

Our collection and use of personal information is governed by our Privacy Policy, which forms an important part of your relationship with us.

We use technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect the information entrusted to us. No online system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, however, and you should take reasonable care over the information you choose to store and the security of your own devices and accounts.

If we become aware of a security incident affecting your information, we will respond in accordance with applicable law.

Where The Social Gardener processes personal data on your behalf as a processor, the Data Processing Terms contained in our Privacy Policy form part of these Terms.

12. Availability of the Service

We aim to keep The Social Gardener available and reliable, but we cannot promise uninterrupted access.

We may need to suspend parts of the Service for maintenance, security, upgrades or circumstances outside our reasonable control.

We may also add, change or discontinue features as the product develops. If a change materially affects a paid service you are already using, we will act reasonably and, where appropriate, provide notice, an alternative or the ability to end your subscription.

13. Closing your account

You may stop using The Social Gardener at any time and may request deletion of your account through the facilities we provide.

If you have a paid subscription, deleting an account and cancelling a subscription may be separate actions. We will make this clear where applicable.

When an account is deleted, we will handle the information associated with it in accordance with our Privacy Policy, including any limited retention required for security, legal or technical reasons.

We may close an account where you seriously or repeatedly breach these Terms, where continuing to provide the Service would create a legal or security risk, or where we are legally required to do so. Except where immediate action is reasonably necessary, we will normally give you notice and an opportunity to address the problem.

14. Our responsibility to you

We will provide the Service with reasonable care and skill.

We are responsible for losses that are a foreseeable result of our breach of these Terms or our failure to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for losses that were not reasonably foreseeable when you agreed to these Terms.

The Social Gardener helps you make decisions about your relationships, but we cannot be responsible for the consequences of personal decisions you make on the basis of its suggestions.

If you use The Social Gardener as a consumer, we are not responsible for business losses such as lost profits, lost revenue or lost business opportunities arising from your use of the Service.

If you use the Service wholly or mainly for business purposes, our total liability arising from your use of the Service will, to the extent permitted by law, be limited to the greater of £100 or the amount you paid us during the 12 months preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability where it would be unlawful to do so, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that cannot legally be excluded.

Nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights as a consumer.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as The Social Gardener develops or where we need to reflect changes in the Service, law, regulation or security requirements.

For minor changes, we may update the Terms on our website.

If we make a material change that affects your rights or obligations, we will take reasonable steps to notify you in advance, for example by email or through the Service.

If you do not agree to a material change, you may stop using the Service and cancel any affected subscription before the change takes effect.

16. Governing law

If you are a consumer living in the United Kingdom, these Terms are governed by the law applicable in the part of the United Kingdom in which you live, and nothing in these Terms deprives you of mandatory consumer protections available to you.

If you are using the Service for business purposes, these Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales and the courts of England and Wales will have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes relating to them.

If you live outside the United Kingdom, you may also benefit from mandatory rights under the laws of your country of residence.

17. General

If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the remaining provisions will continue to apply.

If we do not immediately enforce a provision of these Terms, that does not mean we have waived our right to enforce it later.

These Terms, together with the documents expressly referred to in them, form the agreement between you and us concerning your use of the Service.

18. Contact us

Questions about these Terms or about The Social Gardener can be sent to: