YARD PLANNER is a simple drag-and-drop 2D landscape design app with all the tools you need to mock up your property, create new designs, and share them with friends and family.
YARD PLANNER is ideal for homeowners who want to try out fresh ideas for their yard. Useful for landscape professionals to share designs with clients and contractors. Also perfect for children and adults alike to exercise their imagination and creativity!
Use YARD PLANNER to select and place over 800 beautiful hand-drawn elements including trees, gardens, pools, patios, hammocks, driveways, houses and sheds, solar panels, and just about anything you might want for your property–even parties and weddings!
Features include:
• Sample designs to inspire or get you started
• Simple drag-and-drop functionality
• 34 palettes (800+ hand-drawn elements) to create your landscape design layout
• Resize, Rotate, Undo/Redo, Duplicate, Flip, Group
• Rotate elements with “Snap to 90” or turn off to rotate more precisely
• Snap to grid (elements stick to a re-sizeable grid of guidelines, turn on/off in Settings)
• Rulers (visible at edges of design; zoom in to the single unit; user selects feet/meters; can be turned on/off)
• Choose from 15 different background colors
• Sketch Tool (allows users to draw garden beds and other free-form shapes with an eraser and brushes of different colors, widths and opacity)
• Map Tool (This highly accurate mapping tool based on Google Maps allows you to drop pins at the corners of your property and import the map image with measurements into the app as a background.)
• North arrow (appears with Map Tool)
• Site Analysis palettes to mark the locations of your site’s utilities and light and moisture conditions
• Notes (allows users to tag elements in their designs with typed comments or descriptions)
• Light/Dark mode (changes Note tags and North arrow from white to black for visibility against light backgrounds.)
• Animated Figures (a palette of animated elements—a person, dog, cat, bird, and car—that move through your design on a looped or repeating path, adjustable speed, play and stop animation)
• Import a Photo as a background (useful for importing a digital image of your property plan)
• Create different Layers of elements in your design. Add, delete, rename layers, make each layer visible/invisible, lock/unlock for editing, and reorder layer position.
• In-app step-by-step guide to creating your Property Plan.
• Designs automatically save to the app’s Saved Designs gallery
• Share designs on social media
• Email an editable design so friends can edit one another’s designs and email them back and forth
***As featured in The New York Times, Fox News, USA Today, Gardenista, and more.
“Home Outside allows you to create intricate and varied landscapes…And when you’re finished designing your yard or indulging in a little dreamscaping, you can email results to friend.” –Kate Murphy, The New York Times
“The app gives you drag and drop tools to create a garden design idiosyncratic to your garden [and] allows you to choose hardscape materials, design paths and patios, and arrange furniture in your outdoor space.” –Dalilah Arja, Gardenista
“I can’t imagine a designer who wouldn’t want to have this on their phone or tablet. I’ve tried this app … it’s a great tool for a ‘quickie’ design that you can show clients … and then refine as you like.” –Jane Berger, Garden Design Online
I’ve really enjoyed this app, especially now that I’m getting better at using it. It’s addictive! Two things I would love to see that would be great value-adds and not too much development cost is the ability to stretch an object horizontally or vertically to slightly change its shape. Also would like more images to pick from. The object resizing works great, but sometimes I want to keep the width but extend the length, and I haven’t seen that ability. I would also like to rescale everything so that, for instance, the property shown is 150 ft long and 120 ft wide, instead of 180 ft long and 150 ft wide. I’m just having a hard time dialing that in, so I don’t know how big all my objects really need to be, or I have to account mentally for some conversion factor as I size my objects. There was some kind of scale thing when I first uploaded and blueprint of my property, but I can’t figure out how to get back to it, and I’m worried that all my objects would not adjust with it anyway. That’s why I think ithe option would be cool to rescale the whole thing. Otherwise it’s perfect!
Developer Response
Thank you for these great suggestions. Both are things we're working on! If you have more ideas for improvements, please consider taking our user survey: https://homeoutside.typeform.com/to/iLAmfBkmYou may be thinking of the rulers and gridlines, both of which can be turned on in Settings. At this time, you would have to manually resize objects to match your scale. Thanks again for your comments!
Ok but could be better…
ZandS mom
This app could be great but there are drawbacks. Simple things such as changing the size of the item makes it frustrating to design. An item’s size can change but not the width and length separately. For instance putting in a fence is immensely time consuming. Individual small fence sections must be added to create the appropriate length. And they don’t link to each other. Trying to get everything lined up is ridiculous. I would love it if you clicked on the item (ie: fence) and a box pops up that you could add the correct measurement and it automatically created the fence to the appropriate length. Along with having certain items link would make the design process more efficient. I would enjoy more options for items. In trying to put a garden bed in there was no brown option for shapes. instead of having to scroll through many different shapes in multiple colors, it would be quicker to have many different shapes options then just choose the color from a color wheel. I also wish the paths and patios could adjust the shape as well… a free form type option. I appreciate the layer buttons and locking layers comes in handy but it would be helpful to set each individual item’s layer. The menu could be more efficient as well. It always takes you back to the main menu instead of where you left off. Or if you back out of a subheading you’re back at the main menu again. For instance if I’m in pathways and I back out it doesn’t take me to hardscapes it takes me to the main menu again. More item options would be nice, especially in hardscapes and structures. The app works fine it’s just not very efficient. A few changes would make it more user friendly.
Simple, easy to use, but lacks 3D visualization
Kerrie Puchar
I’ve had this app for about 3 years now. I use it regularly because I am a gardener, and recently purchased a house on 5 acres.I love the ability to import an aerial photo of my lot. That allowed me to see where my existing features were, and set them on a locked layer. Things like the location of my well head, septic tank, and drain field. On a new layer I made proposed hardscaping: a circular driveway, gravel paths for moving supplies, etc. Other layers were made for the garden plantings, water features, and animal enclosures. The basic tools are easy to use. You can rotate and resize the library images, overlapping them to create the basic shape you want.I have found the app to be very stable, not buggy, and I recommend it to everyone.The graphics are like architectural sketches, not photo-realistic, with water color shading. I like the look.I give the app 4 stars because it lacks 2 things in my opinion:- I would love to have the ability to look at my plan in 3D. It looks great from above, how does it look from the driveway? I would gladly pay $10 to upgrade my version of the app to have this feature.- If I plan a tree, shrub, or perennial in my garden, I would like to be able to record that in the app, so that when a plan is final, I have a map of where everything goes, as well as a shopping list to take to the nursery. I would also happily pay for this upgrade because I already know the app is well done and I will continue to use it.
Developer Response
Wow, it sounds like you have mastered the functions of this app! We're very glad to hear that it's been so useful for you. We're currently developing some exciting 3D tools (you can follow Home Outside on Instagram for news about these developments). Have you tried using the Notes feature to label your plants and trees? In future, we'd like to increase the number of notes and add the ability to export a design with notes as a PDF.
See my vision
Captain Oh No
I have been in the landscape industry for over 30 years now. I have used many different design programs during this time. To include expensive cad based programs. This is a good basic and easy to use design app. Some clients can not see the vision of the landscape I’m trying to sell them. When this happens, I find this app very useful to share that vision. There is a little learning curve to be efficient using this design app. Some may not even experience this curve. I can complete a design in about 20 to 30 minutes and either print it out or email it to my client. I’m hoping they continue to add new objects as this will only make it that much better and easier to use. I would recommend this app to anyone who would be in a position to create new landscapes.
Bugs fixes and improves
Version 3.6.2
The developer, Home Outside, Inc., indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
Seller
Home Outside, Inc.
Size
798.7 MB
Category
Lifestyle
Compatibility
Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
iPad Requires iPadOS 14.0 or later.
iPod touch Requires iOS 14.0 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 11.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
