Garden Planner 3.8.86 — Mac version

Garden Planner is a Mac app for laying out beds, paths and planting without fussy CAD menus.

Laying out a new border, step by step

1. Set the scale. Drag the edges of the virtual paper to match your real plot. The grid snaps everything into proportion.
2. Trace the lawn. Pick a shape from the toolbar, drop it onto the canvas, then pull the resize handles. A few clicks roughs out the grass area.
3. Drop in hard landscaping. Choose a path style from the updated library and click to lay it in. Rotate or duplicate slabs until the route feels right.
4. Pick the plants. Search the 1,200-strong built-in library by name or spread. Drag shrubs and perennials straight onto the border. Scale them to show mature size.
5. Check the view. Switch to the 3D walkthrough. It is not photorealistic, but it shows height, spread and gaps you might miss from above.
6. Export a plan. Print directly or save the design as a JPEG or PNG to share. The preview screen shows exactly what the page will look like.

The object report prints a full planting list or saves it as CSV, which is handy when you head to the nursery. User-defined settings let you tweak library elements so the same shrub always appears at the height you measured last summer.

New gravel, stepping stone and herringbone path styles

The jump to 3.8 brought new path styles — more than a cosmetic tweak. You now have extra options for gravel, stepping stones and herringbone brick, which means fewer workarounds with the generic rectangle tool. The 3.8.86 release tidied up a handful of bugs that could make the 3D view stutter on older Intel Macs, and smoothed the export preview so what you see on screen matches the printed sheet more closely. Day to day, the biggest difference is speed when dragging large plant lists: the object library feels snappier, and the report generator no longer hangs on gardens with over a hundred elements.

Export a PNG for your Pages client proposal

Garden Planner does not try to be a full CAD suite, and that is its strength. You might sketch a rough layout here, export a PNG, then drop the image into a Pages document for a client proposal. The CSV plant list slots straight into Numbers or Excel if you want to add columns for cost and supplier. Because the app runs on OS X 10.7 and later — Intel or Apple Silicon — it plays nicely with older Macs that still handle the family admin while a newer machine does the heavy photo editing. The built-in print preview leans on macOS's standard print dialogue, so scaling to A3 or A4 works without extra fiddling.

What the 10.7 minimum means for older Macs

2D view stays responsive on mechanical hard drives

Yes. The 10.7 minimum means anything from a 2007 aluminium iMac onwards can handle it. The 2D view stays responsive even on mechanical hard drives; the 3D walkthrough is smoother on an SSD, but it is perfectly usable without one.

Can I import a photo of my actual garden?

Not as a traceable background layer, no. The workaround is to set your scale carefully and sketch the footprint freehand using the drawing tools. It takes ten minutes and the grid keeps proportions honest.

Does the plant library cover UK gardens?

The 1,200-object library leans temperate, so you will find lavender, box, roses and most common perennials. If a specific cultivar is missing, you can tweak an existing entry's size and colour in the user-defined settings and save it under a new name.

What is the 3D view actually like?

Think of it as a block-model walkthrough rather than a render. Trees show as simple canopies, fences as flat panels. It is brilliant for spotting that a bench blocks the view from the kitchen window, but it will not win design awards for graphics.

Does it handle vegetable plots, or just ornamentals?

You can lay out raised beds with the wall and path tools, then drop in generic leafy objects for crops. The text tool lets you label each bed with variety names, and the object report prints the lot as a planting list.

• New path styles added to the library.
• Performance improvements and small bug fixes.

• macOS 10.7 or later.
• Works on Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.