As the gardening season approaches, many of us are eager to get our hands dirty and create stunning outdoor spaces. Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or just starting, a good garden planner can be an invaluable tool. To help you make an informed decision, we’ve thoroughly tested four popular garden planning software options: Small Blue Printer, Plan Garden, Mother Earth News Garden Planner, and Better Homes and Gardens Garden Planner.

In this comprehensive review, we’ll delve into the features, usability, and overall value of each planner. We’ll also discuss the pros and cons of free versus paid versions, so you can determine which option best suits your budget and requirements. Read on to discover the perfect garden planner to bring your gardening dreams to life!

Small Blue Printer: A Detailed Review

Small Blue Printer (SBP) is a downloadable software that offers a robust set of features for designing your garden or landscape. Available for a one-time purchase of $35, SBP also provides a 15-day trial period, allowing you to fully explore its capabilities before committing to a purchase. The trial version allows you to design, print, and save your plans, making it a great way to test the software. Additionally, SBP offers a free online trial version, which we’ll discuss further. The download of the trial version doesn’t require credit card information, which is a definite plus.

SBP utilizes a simple drag-and-drop interface, making it easy to add objects to your design. You can choose from a wide selection of items, including trees, plants, furniture, and even people and cars. The software also includes a ‘Tools’ function, which allows you to draw custom shapes and sizes for pools, paving, and garden beds. You can also select from a variety of fill options to customize the appearance of these elements.

Changing the fill of an object is straightforward – simply select a new one from the properties window on the right side of the screen. This window also allows you to edit other properties, such as the size of the object. With its extensive library of objects, SBP offers plenty of options to populate your garden and landscaping designs.

SBP provides a plethora of objects to populate your garden or landscape, including a variety of trees, plants, flowers, shrubs, furniture, and even people and cars, offering a comprehensive selection to bring your design to life. However, if your primary focus is planning a vegetable garden, SBP may present some challenges.

One limitation of SBP is that it doesn’t allow for clicking and dragging to resize objects. Instead, you have to manually resize each vegetable and flower in the properties window. While this may not be a major issue for a few trees or a pool, it becomes tedious when dealing with dozens of vegetable icons. Additionally, the objects and plants are not consistently alphabetized. While veggies are alphabetized, flowers are not, requiring you to hunt for specific flowers if you’re planning a flower garden.

Another issue arises when resizing plants to more realistic sizes. The plants may start to truncate in unexpected ways, limiting the number of plants you can fit in a given space. For example, when trying to resize corn plants, the truncation made it difficult to fit a realistic number of plants in a 15′ x 30′ garden space. This issue is further compounded by SBP’s print function, which tabulates the number of plants needed based on the total number of icons pasted into the garden, rather than considering the suggested spacing for each plant. This can lead to inaccurate plant counts and potentially impact your garden planning.

The plant labels in SBP can also be problematic. They don’t resize with the plant icons, which can cause them to dwarf the plants or hide them entirely. While you can turn off the labels, this defeats the purpose of labeling the plants in the first place. When printing your design with the downloadable trial version of SBP, a significant watermark is included. The printout of supplies is based on icon totals only, which may not be accurate. However, you can save your plans to your hard drive, even with the trial version.

The free online trial version of SBP has some limitations compared to the downloadable trial version. While you can print your designs, you can’t save them. Additionally, the free online version doesn’t include the parts list when you print, but it does offer one advantage: it doesn’t include the large watermark found in the downloadable trial version. Upgrading to the paid version or using the downloadable free trial addresses the saving and parts list issues. Both the paid and downloadable trial versions also allow you to export your designs as JPEG and PNG images.

Plan Garden: A Focus on Vegetable Gardening

Next on our list is Plan Garden (PG), a web-based garden planner designed specifically for vegetable gardening. At $20 per year or $36 for two years, it’s the least expensive subscription-based garden planner we reviewed. PG also offers a 45-day trial period, the longest trial period of the planners we tested, and it doesn’t require credit card information to sign up.

Unlike SBP, PG is geared exclusively toward vegetable garden planning. When you start, you’re asked to enter your zip code to receive recommendations for plants that are suitable for your area. The plants are alphabetized, making it easy to find what you’re looking for. Because PG focuses on vegetables, it doesn’t include structures like fences or sheds.

While PG doesn’t have identified flower icons to choose from, you can add flowers to your garden and name them in the plant information window on the right side of the screen.

Like SBP, you have to resize vegetables one at a time in PG. However, PG offers a convenient feature that allows you to create rows or areas of specific plants, so you only need to resize once. The plant information window includes a handy slider for resizing. Unfortunately, labels don’t resize with the icons, so you have to resize them individually. Labels also don’t follow the icons, requiring you to move them separately.

The plant information window offers several useful features. You can track the number of plants you’ve planted, when you planted them, whether you started them indoors, your expected harvest, and your actual harvest.

PG also includes a Daily Log function, which is essentially a gardening journal. You can use it to record when you compost, fertilize, or work in your greenhouse. You can also export the data to Excel or Numbers.

When it comes to printing the actual garden design, PG provides a clean and utilitarian output.

Mother Earth News Garden Planner: A Comprehensive Solution

The third garden planner we reviewed is the Mother Earth News Garden Planner (MEN). This online planner costs $25 per year or $40 for two years and offers a 30-day free trial. It requires Adobe Flash version 9 or higher to run. Like PG, MEN doesn’t require credit card information to start the trial. Instead, you’ll receive an activation code via email.

Similar to PG, MEN asks for your zip code. However, in addition to recommending plants, it also uses your zip code to track frost dates, which can be helpful for planning your planting schedule.

To begin designing your garden, simply choose the size of your garden. In this case, we again chose a 15′ x 30′ plot.

MEN combines the best features of SBP and PG for vegetable garden planning. It includes a wide variety of flowers and vegetables, as well as structures like fences, trellises, beehives, and chicken coops. The extensive selection allows you to plan entire farming operations. It also includes an Irrigation selection with everything you need for watering your garden, such as ponds, pumps, and tubes.

To help you keep everything organized, MEN uses a layers function with five categories: Structures, Plants, Text, Irrigation, and Layout. This allows you to focus on one aspect of your garden at a time without feeling overwhelmed.

Populating your vegetable garden in MEN is a breeze. Simply select the plant you want from the database at the top of the page, place it in your garden, and drag it to the size you want. For example, if you want three rows of corn, simply left-click and drag to size. Changing your mind is easy: another pick and drag magically changes your six potato plants to nine or twelve.

When you left-click on a selection, another window pops up, allowing you to choose a variety. It also provides notes about your crop and the position of the plants you sowed.

If you’re unsure how to grow a particular plant, MEN includes a little “i” icon next to each plant in the database. Clicking this icon will provide you with all the information you need, including soil requirements, position, feeding, and spacing.

MEN provides a Parts List, accessible via a tab at the top of the page, which lists the hard goods needed for your garden, such as the amount of fencing required to enclose your garden.

MEN also includes a Plant List that tells you the exact number of plants you need to fill the space you’ve indicated on your plan. This is because MEN knows the spacing requirements for each plant.

The Plant List includes a color-coded chart that indicates when each plant should be sown indoors or outdoors, as well as when it should be harvested.

MEN produces excellent printouts of your plan. They’re large, colorful, labeled, and readable.

Better Homes and Gardens Garden Planner: A Free Option with Limitations

Finally, we explored the Better Homes and Gardens Garden Planner (BHG). This planner is free to use, but you need to become a member of BHG to access it. However, the free version doesn’t provide access to all features. To unlock all the features, you’ll need to pay $9.99 for six months. BHG also offers a more comprehensive desktop version called GardenPuzzle, which is a one-time purchase. A single license costs $19, while licenses for multiple users range from $29 to $49.

Let’s focus on the free version. BHG provides pre-designed backgrounds. To upload your own background or photo, you’ll need to pay for the full version. This limitation isn’t disclosed until after you sign up for the free version.

The backgrounds are primarily architectural, making this planner unsuitable for vegetable gardens. While there’s a “raised beds” option, there’s no way to fill them, further limiting its usefulness for vegetable gardening.

BHG is the easiest planner to navigate, but that’s because it offers limited customization options. You can pick a background, select structures (like sheds, benches, and pots), choose surfaces (lawn, mulch, brick), and add plants (trees, bushes, vines). You can then place these elements in your plan.

BHG operates on depth of field. Objects in the foreground appear larger than objects in the background.

You can easily adjust the size of objects using the “+” and “-” buttons in the popup window that appears when you click on an object. The window also includes an “i” icon that links to BHG’s Plant Encyclopedia.

Two small icons are located on the right side of the plan page. One is called “Plan View,” which provides an aerial view of your plan without structures. The view is so small that it’s not particularly useful. The other icon allows you to apply paint effects to your plan.

Applying paint effects to your plan can be fun.

BHG allows you to save and print your garden plan, which it does nicely.

Final Grades and Recommendations

Small Blue Printer: B+ for General Landscape Planning, D for Vegetable Garden Planning, A for Free Online Garden Planner

Small Blue Printer is packed with objects, making it suitable for designing your dream garden. However, it’s not ideal for vegetable garden planning. If you’re planning a beautiful yard, this planner might be a good fit. Because it’s a one-time download, it’s also cost-effective. Keep in mind that it doesn’t offer a 3D depth of field option, so you’ll need to use your imagination when considering elevations. For general landscape planning, we give Small Blue Printer a solid B+. If it included an elevation view, it would have received an A. For vegetable garden planning, it gets a D. However, the free online garden planner earns an A.

Plan Garden: C

Plan Garden is a no-frills planner that’s easy to navigate. Of the subscription services, it’s the cheapest and offers the longest trial period at 45 days. If it weren’t competing with Mother Earth News Garden Planner, we’d give it a B. But since it is, we’re giving it a C.

Mother Earth News Garden Planner: A

It’s no surprise that the Mother Earth News Garden Planner is our top performer. For vegetable garden planning, it’s unparalleled. At $25 per year, it’s the most expensive subscription service, but the cost is justified by the potential to save money on crop loss and reduce overall frustration. It’s packed with objects and plants and provides information that can turn any brown thumb green. While it doesn’t offer an elevation feature, vegetable gardens are typically flat, so this isn’t a major drawback. We’re giving MEN an A, compared to SBP’s B+ due to the importance of elevation in general landscape planning.

Better Homes and Gardens Garden Planner: B for Fun, D for Practicality

Our review focused on the free version of the Better Homes and Gardens Garden Planner. We can’t comment on the GardenPuzzle version. The free version is good for brainstorming but not for serious landscape planning. For fun, we’re giving it a B. For practicality, it gets a D.

So there you have it: our review of four popular garden planners. Now go forth and plant!