Compare / The best vegetable garden design apps in 2026
The best vegetable garden design apps in 2026
Grow To Eat is the one to pick if you are laying out a vegetable garden you will use all season. Beds are simple rectangles you name and colour, and what you plant in them drives the weekly task list.
These apps all let you draw a garden. They differ in what you can draw, and in what the drawing does once the season starts. Grow To Eat is not a design tool. It is a planner for people growing vegetables, and the beds are there to tell you what is in each one. Here is what each app draws, what it costs, and who it suits.
Last updated September 2026
Quick picks
- Best overall for vegetable growers: Grow To Eat — Simple beds, and what you plant in them drives the plan for the whole season.
- Best drawing tool: GrowVeg / Almanac Garden Planner — Spacing and rotation handled as you place crops, with a square-foot mode too.
- Best on a phone: Planter — Illustrated tiles on a square-foot grid, with a free garden to start in.
- Best free plot drawer: VegPlotter — The layout planner is free; the jobs list is what you pay for.
- Best for skipping the drawing: Gardenate — No plot and no beds, just what can go in this month.
#1
Grow To Eat
Best for a layout you use through the season
Pricing: Premium €7.49 a month or €44.99 a year. The sowing plan and guides are free; the bed planner is not.
Pros
- ✓Drag and drop, with beds of any size you set in centimetres
- ✓Name and colour every bed, and see a bed-by-bed status overview
- ✓Bed settings for light and soil type, held against the bed with your notes
- ✓What you plant in a bed feeds the same weekly task list as everything else
- ✓Beds are unlimited inside your garden
Cons
- ✗Rectangles and squares only — no curves and no free-form shapes
- ✗No square-foot grid
- ✗No paths, fences, sheds or ground textures
- ✗Light and soil are stored for reference and drive no suggestions
- ✗No plant spacing warnings and no crop rotation warnings
- ✗The bed planner is Premium, not part of the free tier
Best for: Gardeners who want to know what is in each bed, rather than to draw a picture of the garden.
Know what is growing in every bed
A free sowing plan from your location, and a weekly list of what to do next.
#2
GrowVeg / Almanac Garden Planner
Best for spacing and rotation as you place crops
Pricing: $35 a year recurring, or $50 for a single year. 7-day trial, no card.
Pros
- ✓Spacing worked out for you as you place each crop
- ✓Crop rotation warnings when a family repeats in the same bed
- ✓Companion planting flagged inside the layout
- ✓408 plant types and thousands of named varieties to place
- ✓Years of refinement behind the drag-and-drop itself
Cons
- ✗Runs in a browser, so the plan stays at the desk
- ✗No free tier once the 7-day trial ends, and the plan goes with the subscription
- ✗Rectangular beds — no free-form shapes
- ✗The visual result is a working diagram rather than a picture of a garden
Best for: Laying out annual vegetable beds properly, with spacing and rotation handled for you.
#3
Planter
Best for square-foot beds on a phone
Pricing: $24.99 a year, or $99.99 once. Free tier with one garden.
Pros
- ✓The clearest square-foot grid here, with illustrated tiles you can read at a glance
- ✓Illustrated tiles that make a finished bed easy to read at a glance
- ✓Companion feedback while you place, not in a separate panel
- ✓A free tier with a garden in it, and a one-off lifetime price
Cons
- ✗The grid is the only shape — no free-form beds and no whole-garden layout
- ✗No paths, structures or textures
- ✗Planting dates are less specific to where you garden than the schedulers here
Best for: Raised beds and square-foot gardening, planned on a phone in ten minutes.
#4
VegPlotter
Best free plot to draw on
Pricing: $22 Essentials, $35 Advanced a year. Free tier capped at 40 plantings.
Pros
- ✓The layout planner costs nothing
- ✓A month slider showing the plot through the season
- ✓Rotation and companion guidance while placing crops
- ✓Browser plus iPhone and Android
Cons
- ✗Rectangular beds, and limited visual polish
- ✗The free tier stops at 40 plantings a year
- ✗Ticking the jobs off is on the paid plans
Best for: Allotment holders who want a proper plot drawing without paying for one.
#5
Gardenate
Best for skipping the drawing altogether
Pricing: Free on the web. The full app is about $2, once.
Pros
- ✓Free on the web, and about $2 once for the full app
- ✓Six countries, including Australia, New Zealand and South Africa
- ✓Sowing depth, spacing, companions and weeks to harvest per plant
- ✓Scan a seed packet to save the variety
- ✓Works offline, with no account to make
Cons
- ✗No visual planner of any kind — no plot, no beds, no grid
- ✗The list is the same for everyone in your climate zone
- ✗Planting records only; nothing works forward from them
- ✗No weekly view and no task list
Best for: Gardeners who want to know what to sow without drawing anything first.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best vegetable garden design app in 2026?
Grow To Eat is the one to pick for a vegetable garden, because the layout carries on working after you draw it: beds you name and colour, a bed-by-bed view of what is in each one, and every plant you place feeding the same weekly task list. For the drawing itself — spacing worked out as you place crops, rotation held across years — GrowVeg and the Almanac Garden Planner have done it longest.
Is there a free garden design app?
VegPlotter gives you its layout planner free, capped at 40 plantings a year, and Planter's free tier includes one garden. Grow To Eat's bed planner is Premium, though the sowing plan, the weekly view and every growing guide are free. GrowVeg has no free tier after its 7-day trial.
Can I draw curved or L-shaped beds?
Not in any of these. GrowVeg, VegPlotter and Grow To Eat work in rectangles, and Planter works in a grid of squares. For a vegetable garden that matters less than it sounds: a bed you can name, colour and fill with crops tells you more in July than a curve does.
Which app does square-foot gardening?
Planter is built around it, with a grid of squares and companion warnings as you place, and GrowVeg has a square-foot mode that works out how many plants fit in each square. Grow To Eat sets bed sizes in centimetres and lets you put what you like in them, but there is no square-foot grid.
Can I add paths, sheds and fences?
GrowVeg has basic objects for them. Grow To Eat has none — a greenhouse there is a bed you have named Greenhouse and coloured differently, which is enough to plan it but will not draw you a picture of the garden.
Does a drawn plan actually help once the season starts?
Only if the app does something with it. A plan drawn in February is accurate for about three weeks, and then you sow late and the beans go in where the peas were meant to. In Grow To Eat the beds feed the weekly task list and the dates move with you; in the drawing tools the plan stays as you left it.
Do these apps warn me about spacing and crop rotation?
GrowVeg and the Almanac Garden Planner do both as you place crops, and VegPlotter offers rotation guidance. Planter warns about companions in the grid. Grow To Eat does neither today.
Grow To Eat works out the next step for every crop you sow.
Free sowing plans and full A–Z growing guides. No credit card required.
Head-to-head comparisons
Grow To Eat vs Almanac Garden PlannerA phone app for helping you grow food day by day or a desktop garden design tool — and which one fits the way you grow your food in your garden.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs GardenateGrow To Eat tells you what to sow now and what to step-by-step and advice for 120+ crops vs a free monthly garden calendar of what you can sow now.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs GardenizeGrow To Eat tells you what to sow and when — 120+ crops, free vs a journal app helping you keep track of all the plants in your garden.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs GrowVegA phone app for helping you grow food day by day or a desktop garden design tool — and which one fits the way you grow your food in your garden.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs PlantaGrow To Eat tells you what to sow and when — 120+ crops, free vs a plant care app that waters and feeds your indoor and garden plants.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs PlanterGrow To Eat has a free todo list from sowing to harvest vs a cheaper premium tier and more visual for laying out beds — but it is not as useful once the growing starts.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs Seed to SpoonSimilar-sized libraries, very different reach: US zip codes against dates built from your own location.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs SeedtimeClosely matched on features, but Grow To Eat costs about half as much with no caps on free tier features.Read comparison →Grow To Eat vs VegPlotterGrow To Eat gives you a weekly plan from sowing to harvest for free. VegPlotter is cheaper to buy, but the jobs list is monthly and ticking it off is in paid tier.Read comparison →
Last updated: September 2026