Learn — landscape design guides and real plans

The same 4 by 8 foot raised bed shown twice from above as a grid of one-foot squares colored by hours of sun, with a six-foot fence drawn three feet to the south and a pointer to the corner the neighbor's white pine reaches over. On the left, spring: the north half is yellow for full sun except three orange part-sun squares at its east end, the south half is gray for full shade, and only two squares of spinach are planted. On the right, summer: the bed is planted with pole beans and tomatoes along the north edge and peppers, bush beans and basil in the south half, and every square is yellow except an orange and a blue square in the southeast corner

Garden PlanningOctober 13, 2026 · 7 min read

Planning a Raised Garden Bed Plant Layout: It Starts With the Sun

Tall plants in the back is good advice. It just ignores the fence and the neighbor's pine, which decide where the sun lands.

Read the guide →

Three watercolor views of garden beds side by side. On the left an apple tree over a mulched path, with prairie flowers and grasses in front. In the middle two pawpaw trees above drifts of purple and blue woodland flowers. On the right a pomegranate in red flower framed by lavender, with blue fescue along a path

Landscape DesignOctober 11, 2026 · 12 min read

Permaculture Garden Design Looks Different in Every Climate

The best-known guilds come with plant lists, and the lists get copied into climates they were never tested in. Three beds, from a Minnesota winter to a Sacramento summer, show which parts travel and which have to be redrawn.

Read the guide →

Three frames of the same Plantyd planting plan at year 15, labeled Spring, Summer and Fall. The same masses of plants are drawn in each and repainted by season: reds and oranges under green canopies in spring, greens and golds in summer, and a gold tree canopy over browns and purples in fall

Landscape DesignSeptember 7, 2026 · 10 min read

Landscape Design Software Can Plan the Garden You'll Get

Every planting is a bet on three things: how big each plant finishes, what it contributes and when, and what the ground looks like in between. The sketch you make on planting day settles none of it.

Read the guide →

A Plantyd plan of a native garden at year 15. Three big tree canopies, a green blackgum, a green redbud and a gold oak, sit shoulder to shoulder with their edges just meeting, and the smaller perennial masses show through underneath

Garden PlanningSeptember 3, 2026 · 9 min read

How Far Apart Should I Plant Trees and Shrubs? Space Them for Mature Size

The spacing arithmetic that keeps a bed from closing up: how to use mature spread instead of pot size, how far from the house to plant, and how to see a collision fifteen years before it happens.

Read the guide →

A flat illustration of a food forest in cross-section, in Plantyd's forest green, sage and terracotta palette. A tall apple tree stands at the left, a smaller tree beside it, then a band of berry shrubs, then taller perennials, then a low mat of strawberry and clover. Below a thin soil line, garlic bulbs and tubers are drawn in cutaway, and a grapevine twines up a slim wooden post at the right

Landscape DesignAugust 6, 2026 · 13 min read

The Seven Layers of a Food Forest Are an Argument About Light

Permaculture's most reproduced diagram gets taught as a planting list, seven slots waiting to be filled. Read it that way and in ten years you will have shaded out five of them.

Read the guide →

A Plantyd sun-analysis map of a backyard. A large labeled house and ADU sit on the left with a green lawn between them; open yard to the right is shaded by a row of trees. Yellow marks full sun, an orange band marks part sun around the big tree canopy, blue marks part shade including a strip down the east side of the house, and the legend sits in the corner

Garden PlanningJuly 22, 2026 · 9 min read

How Much Sun Does My Yard Get? How to Sun-Map It (Full Sun vs. Partial Shade)

A step-by-step guide to mapping the sunlight in your yard: the free paper-and-pencil method, what "full sun" and "partial shade" actually mean in hours, and how to see where shade will fall as your trees grow.

Read the guide →

Hand-illustrated preview of the zone 7a native garden: a light stone path curving between two beds of colorful perennial drifts, under a green shade tree and a golden fall-color tree

Landscape DesignJuly 1, 2026 · 10 min read

Sun and Shade Analysis for a Zone 7a Native Garden: Mapping the Light from Year 1 to Year 15

Plantyd's sun analysis maps the light in a real native garden at year 1 and year 15: watch several hundred square feet of full sun turn to part shade as the trees grow, and see how the 26-species planting was designed for it.

Read the guide →

Top-down backyard master plan detail showing raised vegetable beds ringed by a peony drift, a curved stone path with a bench, labeled perennial masses, and a spruce privacy screen

Landscape DesignJune 12, 2026 · 8 min read

Whole Home Landscape Design, Piece by Piece: A Zone 6a Master Plan You Can Copy

A whole home landscape design on one sheet: a butterfly garden, raised vegetable beds, a pergola terrace, a spruce screen, and a small orchard on a quarter-acre zone 6a lot, with the design moves worth copying in your own yard.

Read the guide →

Free landscape design plans