How to Place, Move, and Space Plants

Place a plant

1. Open the Plant tab and pick the bed you're filling.
2. Pick a plant in the palette — tap one under Popular, search, or press Tab to focus the palette and browse with the arrow keys.
3. Click the spot on the canvas where you want it. The click point becomes the center of the plant's footprint.

No mouse? Press Tab to focus the bed canvas, then Enter (or Space) to place the plant in the first free spot, scanning left to right from the top-left corner. If it can't find room, you'll see "No free spot found in this bed."

The palette's All view covers vegetables, herbs, fruits, flowers and the other crop categories. Ornamentals (shrubs like abelia and azalea) have their own Ornamentals chip instead, and search still finds every plant.

Plants land on whole inches and stay inside the bed. When you drag one, it lines up with a neighbor's edge.

Place several of the same plant

The plant stays picked after you place it, so each click or tap on empty soil places another one. When you're done, click Cancel or press Esc. Picking a different plant in the palette switches to that one. Clicking or tapping a plant that's already in the bed selects it and stops placing, so you can check or move it without adding a duplicate on top.

Move plants precisely

Select a plant, then nudge with the arrow keys: 1 inch per press, or 6 inches with Shift held. For exact gaps, press M to toggle the measure tool; Esc exits it.

Copy, paste, delete

Ctrl/⌘+C copies the selected plant and Ctrl/⌘+V pastes it a foot down-and-right of the original. Delete or Backspace removes the selection.

Undo and redo

Ctrl/⌘+Z reverses your most recent change; Ctrl/⌘+Y restores it. Undo is single-step. It covers placing, moving, and deleting plants, but only the latest action, so check placements as you go.

Pick a variety

Select a placed plant to open the inspector, then choose a variety from its list. The days to maturity shown there follow the variety you pick, so a 55-day cherry tomato and an 85-day beefsteak read differently. To change the timing itself, see How to adjust planting timing for a specific crop.

How much space each plant takes

New plants use your garden's Default gardening method (in garden settings): Traditional Gardening (full spread) uses the full grown footprint; Square Foot Gardening (compact spread) uses the classic square-foot spacing where the catalog has one, otherwise about two-thirds of the crop's minimum spread. Changing the setting affects new plants only — existing plants keep their spacing.

The full shortcut list is in the keyboard shortcuts reference.

Frequently asked questions

How do I place the same plant multiple times?

Pick it once in the palette, then click or tap the bed for each one. The plant stays picked until you click Cancel, press Esc, or select a plant that's already placed.

Can I undo more than one step in GardenDraft?

No — undo is single-step. Ctrl/⌘+Z reverses your most recent change, and Ctrl/⌘+Y restores it. Older changes can't be rolled back.