Which garden planner should you choose when plant sizes and the seasons matter?

What the pot size does not tell you

In autumn every shrub at the garden centre is small. A container-grown rose of Sharon is barely half a metre across, yet within a few years it can spread to two metres. If the plan counts on its size today, the bed looks nicely full at planting time, and a few summers later the plants grow into each other and lean over the path as well. Our article on mature size goes into this in detail.

The same is true of time. A bed full of flowers in June can be quiet by August and empty in winter. That is hard to see ahead on a drawing that shows a single moment.

What should such a garden planner do?

If choosing and placing the plants is the main question, these are worth looking for:

• True scale: the plot and the beds are drawn in metres, not just in proportion.
• Mature size: a plant takes up as much room on the plan as it will later in the garden.
• Plant data: light, water and soil needs, so you can see whether a plant suits its spot.
• The year: what flowers when, what stays through winter, and where the shade falls in spring or autumn.
• Your language: the interface and the plant names in your own language, if that matters to you.

Not every garden planner is meant for the same job. Some programs make a new picture from a photo of an existing garden; others help you plan an irrigation system or the crop rotation of a vegetable plot. If what you want is to place the plants of an ornamental garden to scale, and to see ahead how a bed changes through the year, other things decide the choice.

How Seasonry helps with this

Seasonry was made for these questions. You draw your plot in real metres, then choose from more than 2,000 plants. Every plant appears on the plan at its mature size by default, so the bed and the gaps between the plants are in the same proportion as they will be in the garden later.

So the drawing already shows where the foliage will meet, and where too much or too little room is left. You are not just putting plants on a drawing: before you plant, you can check how everything will fit in a few years' time.

Every plant in the catalogue lists its light, water and soil needs, and you can filter by them, so for a shady corner or a dry, sunny wall you choose from the plants that suit it in the first place. For a young plant you can enter its size today in the “Current radius” field, and the plan also shows how much room you are keeping for it.

Several views show the year. “Live season” shows the garden month by month, so you can see when the bed is full and when it goes quiet. The “Bloom calendar” shows, plant by plant, what flowers when and where a month is left empty. “Sun & shadow” shows where the shade falls through the day and through the year, and the “Water” panel shows which plants cope better with a long dry spell. “Garden Visual” shows the garden you planned at eye level, as if you were standing beside the bed. It does not generate a new garden: it shows the plants you placed on the plan, in perspective.

Seasonry works fully in English and in Hungarian, plant names included, and its plant data were made for dry, continental gardens, so they are most accurate in Central Europe. It runs in the browser, with nothing to install. You plan on a desktop computer, a laptop or a tablet; on a phone a finished garden can only be viewed. We don't recommend it for a vegetable garden: it keeps no crop rotation and no sowing calendar.

On the free plan you can plan one garden with up to 50 plants, with the full catalogue, the plant data and the filters. “Live season”, the “Bloom calendar”, “Sun & shadow” and the “Water” panel are part of a Seasonry+ subscription. The first lesson of the Guide shows how a plan begins.

Another planner that knows plants

Among the English-language programs that pay attention to plants, one often recommended is Realtime Landscaping. It is landscape design software you install on Windows, bought once, with a free trial. It knows thousands of plants, shows how the garden grows from a few months to more than twenty years, and lets you walk around it in 3D. It is available only in English and only on Windows.

If you are planning something else

• An idea from a photo of your garden: Kertia and Biano AI designer work in Hungarian. They use AI to make a new picture from your photo, and Kertia gives a plant list too. They are quick for an idea, but the picture is not a plan to scale.
• Layout and irrigation: GARDENA myGarden is a free web planner, available in Hungarian too. You can draw paths, a terrace, a lawn and generic plant symbols, and it plans a GARDENA sprinkler system for them. You set the size of the plant symbols yourself; there is no plant data behind them.
• Vegetables: Gardener Planner is free and available in Hungarian; it follows crop rotation and gives you a sowing calendar. In English, GrowVeg and VegPlotter are well known.
• House, terrace and garden in 3D: the free web version of SketchUp and Planner 5D are general design programs, and we found a Hungarian interface in neither. The plants in them are mostly drawing elements.

The planners of DIY stores are often mentioned as garden planners too. The Hungarian sites of OBI and BAUHAUS currently have no garden planner, only indoor planning, for kitchens and bathrooms for example.

In short

• If the question is where the plants go, how big they get and how the year looks, you need a program that knows the plants at their mature size and with their real data.
• Seasonry was made for this, in English and in Hungarian; Realtime Landscaping is one too, in English and on Windows.
• For an idea from a photo, Kertia or Biano AI designer; for irrigation, GARDENA myGarden; for vegetables, Gardener Planner.