Design apps for your backyard to help you build and implement your landscape (2024)

Do you ever feel the urge to shake things up in your backyard? Turn it into the oasis of the neighborhood and make it a gathering place for friends and family? To really envision something extraordinary, though — especially if you’re having a hard time coming up with fantastic ideas — you might want to allow technology to help you out. Figuring out which app to use can be tricky though, especially if you aren’t the most tech-savvy individual. That’s where we come in! Here are our favorite five garden and backyard design apps that are simple to use and perfect for planning your space!

Landscaper’s Companion – Plant & Gardening Guide

A great app to help you with landscaping your backyard is Landscaper’s Companion. With a database of more than 26,000 plants and 21,000 photos, it can help provide you with a ton of information when considering which plants would look best in your yard. It is currently only available for the iPhone.

Home Outside

Another great app that can help you give your yard a makeover is Home Outside. It’s available for both iPhone and Android. Its interface is super simple to use, which opens up the world of landscape planningto just about anyone. With this app, you can choose from 29 different palettes and over 700 different elements to create your ideal backyard sanctuary.

Just a few of the exceptional features you’ll find within the Home Outside app are various tools including an import function that allows you to import images of your home from Google Maps. It also has a sketch tool, which allows you to draw free-form shapes and garden beds.

PRO Landscape Home

PRO Landscape Home, which is available for both iPhone and Android, is similar to Home Outside in that you can take photos and import them into the app. You can then use elements from the app’s library to edit the image and see how things would look in real life if you incorporated them into your designs.

Just some of those elements include photos of flowers, trees, and shrubs that you can place on top of pictures of your backyard. In addition, you can resize every element and create custom areas with mulch, pavement, or grass. This app is free to use, but it offers a paid option with a more extensive library of elements that can provide an incredible amount of variety in your designs.

iScape

The iScape app has a free and paid version, and it’s available on both the iPhone and Android. Many consider it one of the most accessible landscaping apps to use, although it’s similar to other apps on this list in terms of features. For instance, you can import photos and then place various elements on those photos to get an idea of what a space might look like with them included. It’s perfect for envisioning a space before spending time or money creating it.

Gardena myGarden

Gardena myGarden is a free web app that you can use from any browser on laptops, PCs, or tablets. Although the editing functions are not accessible on smartphones, your saved designs are. MyGarden is useful for arranging shrubs, trees, flowers, structures, and pathways. It also has a sprinkler feature to help you see what sprinkler system is the best fit for your yard. The web app also has pre-made example gardens that you can use as a jumping-off point for your own designs.

Your backyard obviously needs to be spruced up and beautified — or you wouldn’t be reading this article! Maybe you want to redesign the entire layout, or perhaps you just want to see where you might best place a little flower garden. With the apps above, you can create designs and share them with family, friends, and the contractor you’ve been thinking of hiring.

Getting feedback before beginning a project is a pretty wise thing to do. We think it’s worth checking out one or more of these apps to get a realistic picture of what the final results of your landscaping might be.

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