3D Landscape Designer

Most gardens are planned on a flat sketch, and a flat sketch hides the thing that matters most: shade. This 3D landscape designer lets you build a model of your yard with raised beds, trees, a shed, fences, paths and even your house, and then shows exactly where the sun falls in any month and at any time of day. Move a tree or a shed and the shadows move with it. Switch on the sun map and every part of the yard is colored by how many hours of direct sun it gets, so you can see which spot suits tomatoes and which suits lettuce before you build a single bed.

The designer is free, needs no sign-up, and saves your yard in your browser. It works in feet and gives soil, lumber and gravel quantities for what you have drawn, so the plan turns straight into a shopping list.

How to use the 3D landscape designer

1. Set your yard size. Enter the width and depth in feet, up to 100 by 100. North is at the top of the screen in the top view and is marked with an N.
2. Set your location. Pick the nearest city from the list, or type your latitude. The path of the sun depends on how far north you live, so this is what makes the shadows right for your yard.
3. Add objects. Use the Add buttons for a raised bed, tree, shrub, shed, house, fence, path or patio. Each one appears near the middle of the yard. Drag it into place; positions snap to half-foot steps so things line up.
4. Adjust each object. Click an object to select it, then change its size in the panel, rotate it 90 degrees, duplicate it or delete it. You can also pick an object from the drop-down list, which is handy when one object hides behind another.
5. Look around. Drag empty ground to rotate the view. Use the Top view button for a plan, the 3D view button to return to the angled view, and the plus and minus buttons, a two-finger pinch, or Ctrl and scroll to zoom.
6. Check the sun. Choose a month, drag the time slider, or press Play day to watch the shadows sweep across the yard from morning to evening.
7. Read the results. The panel beside the yard lists the direct sun each raised bed gets and the soil, lumber and gravel you will need.
8. Keep your plan. Changes save automatically in this browser. Use Download picture to save an image of the yard with the date and time shown.

On a keyboard, click the yard once, select an object, and use the arrow keys to nudge it half a foot (hold Shift for two feet). Press R to rotate, Delete to remove it and Escape to clear the selection.

What you can add to your yard

• Raised bed: 2 to 12 feet wide, 2 to 24 feet long and 6 to 36 inches tall. Beds are the objects the designer measures sun for, and they feed the soil and lumber totals.
• Tree: set the canopy width and the total height. Trees cast the longest and most surprising shadows, so place them carefully.
• Shrub: a rounded plant from 1 to 15 feet wide. Anything two feet tall or more casts shade in the model.
• Shed: a box with a roof, from 4 to 20 feet on a side.
• House: up to 60 feet wide and 35 feet tall. A house on the south side of the garden is the most common reason a bed is shady in winter.
• Fence: up to 80 feet long and 8 feet high. Rotate it to run along any edge.
• Path: a flat strip that adds to the gravel estimate, assuming a depth of 3 inches.
• Patio: a flat slab that adds to the patio area total.

Start from the example yard if you like, then change it to match your own. Use Reset to example yard to go back to it, or Clear yard to start from nothing.

How the sun and shade map works

The designer calculates where the sun is for your latitude, the month you choose and the time of day. It does this every 15 minutes from sunrise to sunset. For each spot in the yard it then asks a simple question: is there anything between that spot and the sun? If a tree, shed, house, fence or tall shrub is in the way, that moment counts as shade. Add up the sunny moments across the day and you have the hours of direct sun.

The sun map colors every part of the yard with that answer:

• Dark blue: under 3 hours of direct sun. This is shade.
• Pale yellow: 3 to 6 hours. This is part shade.
• Orange: 6 hours or more. This is full sun.

A few details are worth knowing so you can read the results correctly:

• Solar time, not clock time. The time slider uses solar time, where noon is the moment the sun is due south. Your watch can differ by an hour or more, especially during daylight saving time. The hours of sun are not affected.
• Clear-day estimate. The result is the direct sun you would get on a cloudless day. Clouds, haze and smoke reduce it, and reflected light from walls adds a little.
• Measured above the soil. Sun is checked about one foot above the ground, roughly where low crops grow.
• Mid-month sun. Each month uses the middle of that month. Early and late in the month the numbers shift a little.

Why the sun changes so much through the year

Gardeners are often surprised that a bed that bakes in July sits in shade in December. The reason is the height of the sun. At 40 degrees north, which is roughly the latitude of Philadelphia, Denver and Indianapolis, the midday sun climbs to about 73 degrees above the horizon in mid-June but only about 27 degrees in mid-December. A low winter sun throws long shadows, and a high summer sun throws short ones.

You can estimate a shadow yourself: divide the height of the object by the tangent of the sun’s height. A 20-foot house wall casts a shadow about 6 feet long at noon in June and about 40 feet long at noon in December. That is why a bed 15 feet from a south-side house can be in full sun all summer and in the shade of the wall all winter.

Day length matters as well. At 40 degrees north an open spot gets about 14 hours of direct sun in mid-June and only about 8 in mid-December. Move the month selector in the designer and watch the numbers and the colors change.

This is also why timing matters for planting. Use the frost dates by ZIP code tool to decide when to plant, and the designer to decide where, so that a spring crop is not in shadow just as it needs the light.

How much sun do vegetables need?

Gardeners use three standard groups, and the designer labels each bed with one of them:

• Full sun, 6 or more hours. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cucumbers, melons, beans and corn. These are the fruiting crops, and they give the most when they get the most light.
• Part shade, 3 to 6 hours. Lettuce, spinach, kale, chard, peas, broccoli and cabbage do well here, and in hot climates they often prefer a little afternoon shade. Root crops such as carrots, beets and radishes manage on about 4 to 6 hours, though they grow more slowly.
• Shade, under 3 hours. Too dim for most vegetables. Mint, chives, parsley and some leafy greens can cope, and the spot is better used for a compost bin, a seating area or shade-loving flowers.

Look up a specific crop with the sunlight requirement finder, then match it to the bed with the right amount of sun. The plant spacing calculator and the companion plant finder help with what goes next to what.

Tips for placing raised beds

1. Find the sunniest ground first. Turn on the sun map in June and again in your main growing months, and put the beds for tomatoes and peppers in the orange areas.
2. Run beds north to south. In most of the US this gives plants even light on both sides as the sun moves across the sky. A bed that runs east to west leaves the north side in the shade of the plants on the south side.
3. Put tall crops on the north end. Tomatoes, corn and trellised beans cast shade to the north, so planting them at the north end keeps them from shading shorter crops.
4. Keep beds about four feet wide. You can then reach the middle from either side without stepping on the soil. Leave paths of about three feet so a wheelbarrow fits.
5. Stay clear of big trees. Trees shade beds, and their roots compete for water and nutrients well beyond the edge of the canopy. When you can, keep beds outside the canopy line.
6. Think about water. Place beds within hose reach, or plan for drip irrigation. The drip irrigation calculator helps you size a system once the layout is settled.
7. Consider the morning. Morning sun dries dew from leaves and warms the soil, which is good for plant health. Afternoon shade can protect lettuce and spinach from summer heat.

Want a quick starting layout? The garden layout generator drafts beds from your space and crop list, and the raised bed planner lets you place crops square by square once a bed is positioned.

Working with trees, fences and buildings

Shade from permanent structures is predictable, so you can plan around it. A few points help you get more from the model:

• Trees are treated as solid. In real life a tree’s shade is dappled and a leafy canopy lets some light through. A deciduous tree such as an oak or maple loses its leaves in fall, so it lets winter sun through, while an evergreen shades the ground all year. If a shaded bed is under a deciduous tree, the real winter and early spring light may be better than the map suggests.
• Fences and walls matter most in winter. An 8-foot fence a few feet south of a bed can take hours of low winter sun but hardly any in summer. If you grow cool-season crops through winter, check December and January.
• Test a change before you make it. Thinking of planting a tree or putting up a shed? Add it to the yard first, then step through the months to see what it will shade. Moving it a few feet costs nothing in the model.
• Compare seasons side by side. Take a picture of the yard in June and again in December using the download button, and compare them.

From design to shopping list

Once your beds, paths and patio are in place, the results panel works out what to buy:

• Soil for all beds in cubic yards and cubic feet, with 15 percent added for settling, plus the number of 2 cubic foot bags.
• Bed frame lumber as total linear feet around every bed.
• Path gravel in cubic yards for a 3-inch layer.
• Patio area in square feet, and fence length in feet.

These are planning figures. For more detail, move on to the raised bed soil calculator, the raised bed lumber cut list and the mulch calculator. The garden shopping list generator collects it all into one list, and the garden cost calculator turns it into a budget.

What this designer does not do

It is a planning tool, and it helps to know its limits:

• It shows simple shapes, not detailed models, and does not draw individual plants or photographs of your yard.
• It does not model slopes, raised terraces or underground features, so it assumes level ground.
• Sun hours are for a clear day. Weather and your local climate will change real results.
• It is not a construction drawing. Before building walls, decks, drains or fences, check property lines, utility lines, drainage and local rules.
• Your plan is stored only in this browser on this device. Download a picture of anything you want to keep, and note that clearing your browser data removes the saved yard.

Frequently asked questions