The vegetable garden planner that runs on your real frost dates.
Lay out a 4×8 bed, drop in tomatoes, basil, peppers, and flowers, and the planner turns that sketch into dates you can use: when to start seed trays, when the bed is warm enough, what will crowd, and whether a second sowing has time before fall.
One garden is free. Grower lifts the cap to unlimited gardens and beds for $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year.
From bed sketch to planting calendar.
Set your location
Type in your postal code. GardenDraft finds the frost record behind your calendar, then lets you override it if your yard runs colder or warmer than the station.
Design your beds
Drag plants onto raised beds, in-ground rows, or containers. Spacing, snap-to-grid, and companion hints show up while you work, so crowding is visible before you buy seedlings.
Plant on schedule
Tomatoes, lettuce, beans, and carrots each get their own sow, transplant, and harvest windows. Add reminders when you want a nudge before a window closes.
The useful part is the messy middle.
GardenDraft is built around the questions gardeners ask in March and April: did I start peppers too late, can basil sit under these tomatoes, and is there time for another round of beans after the first one comes out?
Tomato transplant
Counts back from your last spring frost, then leaves room for hardening off instead of dumping one date on the calendar.
Basil near tomato
Shows the companion note in context, next to the plant you are placing, with the cited source behind the data.
Second bean sowing
Checks days to maturity against first fall frost so late-season rounds do not quietly run out of time.
4×8 spacing
Uses the plant's actual footprint on the bed, so a pretty layout cannot hide a crowded one.
A layout editor designed for your phone.
Most garden planners were built for a desktop mouse and bolted a cramped mobile view on afterward. This one was drawn for touch from the start. You pinch to zoom, drag to pan, and snap plants to a grid with your thumb. The keyboard shortcuts are there when you sit down at a desk, but you never need them.
- Pinch to zoom and drag to pan, sized for thumbs.
- Snap guides light up as plants line up.
- Switch to the 3D view to walk a bed before you dig it.
- At a desk: marquee select, ⌘/Ctrl-scroll to zoom, and arrow keys to nudge in 1” steps.
- Undo and redo anywhere.
Four jobs the planner has to get right
The full list runs longer, but these are the pieces that change the plan from a drawing into something you can follow outside.
Frost-aware scheduling
Indoor-sow, direct-sow, transplant, and harvest windows, each worked out from local frost normals with a margin for how much dates swing year to year.
One editor, every device
Snap to a plain grid or to 12” square-foot cells. Pinch-zoom in the garden, use keyboard nudges at a desk, and undo either way.
Companion-aware plant data
Friend-and-foe notes are drawn from extension and research sources. Good neighbors light up in the inspector as you place each plant.
Succession planting
Set a crop to re-sow every couple of weeks. The planner marks which rounds have time to finish before your first frost and which ones are unlikely to mature.
The 3D view, seed inventory, and PDF exports all live on the full feature list.
The date math stays visible.
USDA zones are useful for winter hardiness, but they are a rough tool for spring timing. GardenDraft keeps the arithmetic visible so you can trust it, adjust it, or ignore it when your own yard knows better.
The full frost-date explanation lives in help and the last frost date guide.
Find the station
Your postal code maps to a climate-normals station rather than a whole-state planting zone.
Read both frost anchors
Last spring frost and first fall frost become the calendar anchors for warm-season and cool-season crops.
Apply crop rules
Each plant brings its own lead time, transplant offset, spacing, and days-to-maturity math.
Let the gardener overrule it
If your slope, wall, valley, or cold pocket disagrees with the station, you can set your own dates.
Free means free — and your plans stay yours.
Most planners put the useful parts behind a subscription, then lock your garden the day you stop paying. GardenDraft works the other way: the whole toolkit runs on the free garden, and cancelling never takes your work away.
Every feature on the free garden
No credit card, no trial countdown. Your first garden — up to 3 beds — runs the full toolkit: frost-aware dates, the 3D view, companion hints, succession, reminders, the journal, and PDF exports. Grower only lifts the cap to unlimited gardens and beds.
Cancel without losing your work
Stop paying and editing simply pauses. Your plans, photos, journal entries, and harvest history stay viewable — and resubscribing picks up exactly where you left off.
Nothing held hostage
The Garden Book PDF and calendar feeds keep working after you cancel, so years of garden notes stay yours to keep, not locked behind a renewal.
See how that stacks up against trial-only and subscription-gated planners on the planner comparison.
A free plant library, planting calendars, and growing guides
Open to everyone — no account needed.
Built from years of garden notes.
GardenDraft is made by a small team that has lost seedlings to late frost, forgotten what went in the back bed, and learned the hard way that a pretty layout is useless if it ignores timing. The app is opinionated about dates and spacing, but it leaves room for the gardener to know the yard.
Sketch your first bed today.
Draw a bed, drop in a few plants, and you’ll have a planting calendar for your postal code before you close the tab.
One garden stays free. Grower is $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year for unlimited gardens and beds, and you can cancel whenever you like.