The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner - for home gardeners.

Transform your garden with the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner - smart garden design software for creating stylish bespoke planting plans with stunning year-round impact. A tailored Maintenance Calendar and cultivation advice helps keep your garden thriving.

Easy to use

Simple, interactive screens guide you through your options – choose colour, mood and style. The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner generates stunning planting plans for your garden borders, uniquely tailored for your garden’s conditions.

Ideal for all levels of experience

New to gardening? The PlantingPlanner holds your hand through the whole planning and planting process. For the experienced gardener it provides new inspiration and up-to-the-minute plant choices.

Small gardens or large

Perfect for a small garden design – or creating planting plans for the flower beds of a stately home.

Suitable for UK gardens

Outside the UK? Click here for more information.

Full maintenance schedule

Each individualised plan comes with its own Maintenance Calendar and full cultivation advice. Detailed plant information and photographs help you to visualise the final plan.

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The above video is a short introduction to the Home Gardener version.

For a more detailed view, watch our 10 minute demo video.

Who is it for?

Have you ever visited a beautiful garden and wished yours looked as wonderful?

Or gathered up a trolley-full of plants in the garden centre but ended up with a flower bed that looked fantastic in June and boring for the rest of the year?

Have you waited with keen anticipation for spring, only to find that last year’s plants failed to survive the winter - and those that did are now a shadow of their former glory, because you weren’t quite sure how to look after them?

If any of this sounds familiar, then the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner is for you.

The software is ideal for all levels of gardening abilities.

Amateur gardeners will not need to acquire a vast knowledge of horticulture before beginning to create beautiful garden borders, while the wide-ranging help panels will provide the practical help you need to get the most from your plot.

Experienced gardeners will find new inspiration in the stunning planting combinations suggested in the planting plans and will enjoy experimenting with new styles and colour themes.

For Professional gardeners and designers we also have the more powerful PlantingPlanner Pro version, which adds extra design flexibility and professional features.

A light-shady, stepping-stones path winding through a woodland garden border, between ferns and summer flowers such as Aquilegia, geraniums and forget-me-nots

  • Save effort

    Yes, of course, you can do all the research yourself – study the Plant Encyclopaedias, find plants to suit your conditions, work out how best to combine them for year round interest in your garden borders, look up how to maintain them…

    But if you’re short of time, need a helping hand or just want to be out there with a trowel in your hand, the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner will do it all for you in minutes.

  • Save money

    Impulse buys can be expensive, especially if you find that your beautiful new plants curl up and die when they see their new home, or freeze to death after the first winter.

    Save money by buying plants which you know will thrive in the conditions of your own garden. The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner will draw up a shopping list of plants ideally suited to your borders.

  • Time after time…

    Create a new plan whenever you want - find fresh garden design ideas.

    Tackle new flower beds whenever you’re ready.

    The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner will generate as many plans as you need – time after time……

A dense, rounded, drumstick-style head of purple-pink Allium sphaerocephalon flowers, in a summer garden border among ornamental grasses
Elegant, pure white lily-flowers of Tulip ‘White Triumphator’ growing in the light-shade of a spring garden border
Delicate, red-tinged, bright green acer leaves in a woodland garden border
A striking, deep maroon-red and purple poppy flower with a bright yellow centre, growing in a garden border
A pretty cluster of small pink flowers of the lovely deciduous Callicarpa bodinieri ‘Profusion’ shrub, giving midsummer garden colour
A clump of beautifully formed, semi-double, pale pink flowers of a ‘The Generous Gardener’ rose climbing up a cast iron garden arch

How does it work?

The Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner is a unique type of garden design software. It is smart software, leading you step by step through the process of designing your garden borders.

  • Use the program's drawing tools to draw the layout of your garden borders.
  • Mark out boundaries, indicating any fences or walls to cover, and identify front/back of flower beds.
  • Follow the prompts to enter the light and soil conditions. (Help is readily available to guide beginner gardeners.)
  • Choose the colours and style you want for each border. Add options such as family friendly, low maintenance, wildlife friendly, etc.
  • Hit the Generate button.

Using built-in intelligent logic, the Weatherstaff PlantingPlanner generates a stunning, bespoke planting plan, tailored for your garden’s growing conditions and your choice of colour and style.

Be creative. Interactive features allow you to adapt the generated plans. Substitute plants you don’t like with suggestions from the built-in encyclopaedia. ‘Lock’ plants in position so that they remain in place when you re-generate the plan. ‘Exclude’ plants you don't want.

Create beautiful new flower beds with year-round interest - or revamp old garden borders with striking new planting ideas. Pre-position your existing plants and then generate a new planting plan around them.

Each plan comes with its own tailored Maintenance Calendar and full cultivation advice. For less experienced gardeners there is built-in help and advice that will guide them through every stage of creating a garden border - from how to determine the type of soil to pruning and maintenance tasks.

A summer garden border viewed through a cast-iron arch - showing a mutitude of planting, such as dusky pink poppies, blue Ceanothus, bright ornamental grasses

What makes a successful planting plan?

Creating a successful planting design for your garden borders can involve hours of decision-making. I know – I’ve put those hours in and scrawled lists of plants on countless sheets of paper and backs of envelopes.

The first step is to know your garden...

1. Go on a fact-finding mission.

Check out which areas of the garden catch the sun and at what time of day. In other words, where’s the best place to drink your morning coffee? And is it the same for your afternoon tea?

Know where the wind whips through, creating draughty corridors and which parts still have frost on the ground long after the rest of the garden has warmed up.

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