Plan by the square foot

Vegetable Garden Planner

Grow your garden on paper first.

Our free vegetable garden planner lets you design your garden before you ever pick up a trowel. Choose a garden size, then drag vegetables and companion flowers into the bed. Every plant automatically takes the space it needs to grow, so your paper plan matches what will actually fit once everything is in the ground.

I have been sketching garden layouts on paper for years, long before anything like this existed. Planning ahead saves real frustration later. Nothing is more discouraging than realizing in June that your tomatoes and squash are fighting over the same six inches of space. This vegetable garden planner does that thinking for you, right on screen.

Garden size

8 ft × 4 ft · 32 sq ft

Plant footprints show recommended growing space, not the number of seeds or seedlings inside each area.

Companion planting guide

As you add plants, helpful pairings and combinations to keep apart will appear here.

Garden season guide

❄ Cool-season plantsPlant in early spring or fall. These crops prefer cooler soil and many tolerate a light frost.

☀ Warm-season plantsPlant after frost danger has passed and the soil has warmed.

Add plants to see your garden's season mix.

Companion Planting Quick Guide

Use this chart while designing your garden to place vegetables near companions that may support healthier growth, attract helpful insects, or discourage common pests.

Find your main crop in the first column.
Choose one or more good companions.
Return to the planner above and add them to your bed.

View chart full size

Companion planting chart showing good companions and benefits for tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, beans, cucumbers, and peppers — Click the chart to view it at full size.

How to Use This Vegetable Garden Planner

Using this vegetable garden planner is simple. Start by choosing a garden size from the dropdown, or enter your own custom dimensions if your bed is an unusual shape. Then browse the plant palette on the left, filtering between vegetables and companion flowers, and either drag a plant directly into the bed or click it to add it automatically.

Each plant occupies the actual growing space it needs, scaled to the grid. If you try to place two plants too close together, the vegetable garden planner will let you know and suggest a more open spot instead. This is one of the most useful features of the tool, since overcrowding is one of the most common mistakes new gardeners make on paper and in real beds alike.

As you add plants, the companion planting guide below the garden bed updates automatically, showing you which combinations work well together and which ones are better kept apart. The season guide also tracks whether your plan leans toward cool-season crops, warm-season crops, or a mix of both, which is a good gut check before you commit to a layout.

Why Plan a Vegetable Garden on Paper First

A vegetable garden planner earns its keep before a single seed goes in the ground. Mistakes made on screen cost nothing and take seconds to fix. The same mistakes made in the actual soil cost a season.

Planning ahead also helps you use your space more efficiently. It is easy to eyeball a garden bed and misjudge how much room a mature squash plant or a sprawling tomato will actually need. A scaled plan takes the guesswork out of that decision, so you are not discovering the problem halfway through summer when everything is already tangled together.

Tips for a Better Garden Layout

Group plants with similar water and sun needs together, so you are not trying to satisfy two very different sets of requirements in the same corner of the bed. Leave yourself a real path to reach the middle of the bed for weeding and harvesting, rather than filling every available inch with plants. And use the companion planting suggestions in this vegetable garden planner as a starting point, not a strict rulebook. Every garden is a little different, and some of the best combinations come from your own experience over a few seasons.

Once you have a layout you like, print it and keep it with your garden notes. A saved plan is also a useful record for next year, since you can look back and see what worked, what got crowded, and what you would place differently the second time around.