How the Designer Works
The designer itself stays a working tool, not a wall of copy. This page is the copy: what it checks for you, and how it compares to the paid planners.
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Bad neighbours, flagged as you go
Most planners hand you a grid and leave the horticulture to you. This one checks each square against the ones around it while you fill them in. Put beans next to onions and it says so, with the reason, before you've dug anything. Put basil next to tomatoes and it tells you you've done something right. The pairings come from the same dataset behind every plant profile here.
Or let it do the arranging
Say you want four tomatoes, a dozen carrots and some basil. It puts the tall and trellised things along the north edge so they don't spend July shading everything behind them, the sprawlers on the outside where they can spill over the frame, and the rest in the middle. If something won't fit it says which, rather than quietly leaving it out.
It remembers what grew where
Record a season when it's finished and the beds clear for next year, but we keep which plant families grew in each one. Put a tomato back in a bed that had potatoes in it two years ago and you'll be told, because those are the same family and the blights that affect them sit in the soil waiting. Three years between families is the usual advice, and it's the sort of thing nobody remembers unaided by February.
A second opinion before you buy seed
"Check my plan" goes over the whole thing at once: anything sitting next to a plant it fights with, anything outside your zone's range, tall things casting shade the wrong way, and groups too small to work. Corn is the one that catches people out. It's wind-pollinated, so four plants in a tidy row will grow beautifully and give you cobs with about six kernels on them.
Then it turns the picture into dates
Once there are plants in the bed you get a week-by-week list for your zone: start these indoors the week of March 14, move them out May 9, direct-sow those now. Shift the start date or pick a different planting window and it recalculates. Same engine as the planting calendar.
The plan belongs to you
It saves in your browser, not on our server, which is also why clearing your browsing data clears it. Copy a link that carries the whole layout, download it as a file, or print the bed and take it outside where the mud is.
Four planners, side by side
The paid planners are good software. Here's where each of them sits, checked in August 2026 against their own pages. Prices move, so follow the links before you trust any of this.
| This designer | GrowVeg | Almanac Garden Planner | Planter | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | $35/year (auto-renew) or $50 one-time | $35/year (auto-renew) or $50 one-time | Free tier; $24.99/year premium |
| Free without a time limit | Yes | No, 7-day trial | No, 7-day trial | Yes, one garden |
| Account required | No | Yes | Yes | Yes for sync |
| Square-foot grid | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Plants covered | 307 | Not published | 250+ | 80+ plants, 1,000+ varieties |
| Sourced variety picks | 610, every one linked to a real source | Not published | Not published | 1,000+ claimed |
| Crop rotation history | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Native mobile apps | No, web only | No, web only | No, web only | Yes |
Where they beat us
Reminders and reach. GrowVeg and the Almanac planner will email you when it's time to sow something, which we don't do at all, and the Almanac planner covers more plants than our 307. Planter has proper phone apps. We're a web page.
What you get here instead: nothing to pay, nothing to sign up for, and a tool that tells you why rather than just drawing your bed. If that trade suits you, take a ready-made plan and pull it apart, or open the designer.
Common questions
- Is the Garden Designer really free?
- Yes. There is no paid tier, no trial period and no account. Your plan is stored in your own browser, and you can download it as a file or copy a link that carries the whole layout.
- Do I need to create an account?
- No. Nothing is stored on our servers, which is also why clearing your browser data clears your plan. Use the download button if you want a copy you keep.
- How does it know when to plant things?
- From your USDA hardiness zone. Set it with the ZIP lookup at the top of any page, and the schedule works back from that zone's average frost dates using each crop's days to maturity.
- How many plants does it cover?
- 307: vegetables, herbs and annual flowers, each with spacing, sowing method, days to maturity and companion pairings.
- Can I use it on a phone?
- Yes, it runs in a mobile browser and the grid scrolls sideways on narrow screens. There is no app to install.
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A free square-foot garden designer: drop plants onto a grid and get spacing, sowing dates and companion-planting advice as you go.
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