Quote from Lee Garden Ninja on 7th April 2026, 7:34 am

Hi @corneliy

Welcome to the forum and congratulations on the new place. Garden planning is a really exciting stage and it's great that you're thinking about it properly before reaching for a spade.

Rather than pointing you towards any particular app or software, I'd actually suggest that the best place to start is understanding the design principles behind what makes a garden work, because without that foundation any planning tool is only as good as the decisions you put into it. Getting the fundamentals right first will save you a lot of time and money further down the line.

Where to Start with Garden Design

I've put together a range of resources specifically for people in exactly your position, new to a garden and not quite sure how to approach it. My Where to Start with Garden Design guide is a good free first read and covers the thinking behind surveying your space, understanding your aspect and soil, and beginning to put a plan together before you commit to anything.

Hand Drawing Your Plan

One of the things I always teach is that hand-drawing your garden plan on graph paper is actually one of the most effective planning methods available, and it costs almost nothing. It forces you to measure properly, think in scale, and really understand the space you're working with. A pencil, some tracing paper for revisions, and a tape measure will get you remarkably far. My front garden design guide and small garden design guide both walk through how to approach a compact space like yours with practical design thinking.

My Online Garden Design Courses

If you want a structured, step-by-step approach to learning how to plan and design your garden properly, my online courses are built for exactly this situation.

The Garden Design for Beginners course at £199 takes you through the entire design process from survey and brief through to planting plans and implementation. It covers how to draw up your space, how to layer planting, how to work with your aspect and soil type, and how to create a garden that looks intentional and cohesive rather than improvised. You work through it at your own pace and it includes quizzes to check your understanding as you go.

If budget is a consideration, my Small Garden Templates course at £29 gives you 30 ready-made garden design templates that you can adapt to your own space. For a small garden this is a really practical shortcut that still teaches you the design thinking behind each layout.

The Weekend Garden Design Online Course at £69 is a middle ground option that takes you through the key design principles over a focused weekend of learning.

Free Resources to Get You Started

There's also a huge amount of free content on the site to explore before you commit to anything. The Garden Ninja YouTube channel has practical design and planting videos that are a great companion to the written guides, and the forum here is always a good place to ask questions as your plan develops.

Do let us know how you get on with the survey and planning stage. Happy to help as you work through it.

Lee Garden Ninja

Quote from CathyB on 7th April 2026, 9:49 am

Hi! I think Lee said it perfectly already, I just wanted to add that Reddit has plenty of communities on gardening and plants where you can post and ask questions as well and get lots of thoughtful advice if you need to. 

As for the planning, personally I'm skeptical about AI tools, especially chat bots since they don't "learn" on your commentary and mess the measurements up a lot, so using something where you draw a plan from scratch would be a better option imo. I liked garden box3d for basic planning as it's simple and the only thing lacking is a plant identifying tool. If you don't need one and just want to make a landscape mockup, then it's a good app for a beginner imo.