Ready-Made Garden Plans
Laid-out beds you can open in the Garden Designer and change however you like. Each one is arranged so tall plants don't shade short ones and nothing sits next to a plant it fights with, and each opens with sowing dates worked out for your own zone.
Free, no account, nothing to install. If you'd rather start from nothing, the designer does that too.
- A beginner's 4x4 square-foot garden
A first raised bed that fits sixteen squares: two tomatoes, salad, roots and a companion flower, arranged so the tall plants don't shade the short ones.
- A 4x8 salsa garden
One 4x8 bed that grows everything in a jar of salsa: tomatoes, peppers, onions and cilantro, with basil and marigold worked in as companions.
- A kids' first garden
A 4x4 bed chosen for speed and payoff: radishes up in a week, sunflowers overhead, beans to pick standing up, and nasturtiums you can eat.
- A cut-and-come-again salad bed
A 4x4 bed that keeps producing salad instead of giving you everything at once: leaves you cut rather than pull, plus roots and chives.
- A high-yield 4x8 bed for a small urban plot
A 4x8 bed built around crops that keep producing rather than one-and-done crops: trellised peas and cucumbers on the north edge, beans, chard, bok choy, lettuce and carrots filling the rest.
- A no-conflict 3x6 beginner bed
Eighteen squares of crops with zero listed antagonists against each other, so a first-time gardener can plant this exactly as laid out without checking a companion chart.
The usual first-bed mistakes, already worked out
An empty 4x4 grid is sixteen decisions at once, and first beds tend to go wrong the same few ways: three tomato plants where one fits, a zucchini that swallows half the bed by July, onions squeezed in beside the beans. These layouts have been through those decisions. Tall and trellised plants sit on the north edge so they don't shade the rest, nothing sits beside a plant it competes with, and every square holds the number of plants its crop needs: one tomato, four lettuces, sixteen carrots.
Which bed fits your plot
For a first garden, the beginner 4x4 is the safest bet, and the 3x6 no-conflict bed is built so that nothing in it is listed as a bad neighbour for anything else in it. If you cook, the salsa bed puts tomatoes, peppers, onions and cilantro in one 4x8. In a hot zone, sow its cilantro in early spring or fall, since it bolts fast once the days turn hot. The kids' bed is picked for quick results: radishes are ready in about 25 days and sunflowers end up overhead. The salad bed gives you leaves to cut rather than heads to pull, so it keeps producing for weeks. On a small urban plot, the high-yield 4x8 trains peas and cucumbers up a trellis on the north edge and fills the rest with crops you pick over and over.
Open one, then make it yours
Opening a plan loads it into the Garden Designer with sowing dates for your zone. Swap a crop, resize the bed or add a second one; the companion warnings and the schedule update as you go. Your changes stay in your browser, with no account involved.
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Six free ready-made raised-bed layouts: a beginner's 4x4, a salsa garden, a kids' first garden, a cut-and-come-again salad bed, a high-yield 4x8 and a no-conflict 3x6. Open and edit any of them in a free garden designer.
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