Yard Makeover Before and After Tool

It is hard to picture a yard makeover from a list of plants. Will a flowering tree crowd the window? Does a paver patio look right next to the fence? This free before and after tool lets you find out in a few minutes. Upload a photo of your own yard, drag in trees, shrubs, flower beds, mulch, a patio or a bench, and then slide between your original photo and your new design.

Nothing is uploaded to a server. Your picture stays in your browser, so you can try as many ideas as you like, and you only download an image when you want to keep one.

What the yard makeover tool does

The tool has three views. In Design view you place items on top of your photo and move them around until the yard looks the way you imagine it. In Remove object view you paint over something already in the photo, such as an old shrub, a bin or a hose, and the tool fills the space with the grass, mulch or wall around it. In Before and after view a divider appears over the picture, and you drag it from side to side to compare the yard as it is today with the yard you just designed. The divider also works with the keyboard, using the slider under the picture.

The item library covers the things most home gardeners actually plan for. Plants include a shade tree, a flowering tree, an evergreen, a round shrub, a hydrangea, a hedge, lavender, ornamental grass and sunflowers. Beds and ground covers include a raised vegetable bed, a mixed flower bed, mulch, gravel, a patch of lawn, a paver patio and stepping stones. Features include a planter pot, a boulder, a garden bench, a trellis with a vine, a bird bath and a picket fence.

Every item can be moved, made bigger or smaller, flipped, duplicated or removed. A running list under the picture counts what is in your design, so you can see at a glance that you planned two shrubs, three flower beds and one bench.

How to use the before and after tool

1. Choose a photo. Pick a picture of your front yard, backyard, side yard or a single bed. If you want to try the tool first, press Use a sample yard.
2. Add items. Click an item in the list to place it, or drag it straight onto the photo. Use the three tabs to switch between plants, beds and ground, and features.
3. Place and size each item. Drag an item to move it. Drag the gold handle at its top corner, or use the Size slider, to change how big it looks. On a keyboard, select an item and use the arrow keys to nudge it, the plus and minus keys to resize it, and Delete to remove it.
4. Compare. Switch to Before and after and drag the divider across the picture. Go back to Design view whenever you want to change something.
5. Save it. Download the finished makeover as a picture, or download a side by side before and after image that is ready to share.

Undo and redo are always available, and Clear all starts the design over without changing your photo.

Taking a photo that works well

A good starting photo makes a big difference to how believable the result looks. These habits help:

• Shoot in even light. An overcast day or the hour after sunrise avoids harsh shadows that make added items look pasted on.
• Stand back and hold the phone level. A straight-on view makes it easier to judge sizes. Tilting the phone down makes the ground look steep and distorts everything.
• Include reference objects. A fence, a window, a door or a mailbox gives you something to compare against when you size a tree or a shrub.
• Clear the clutter. Move hoses, bins and toys out of the frame if you can, and use Remove object to paint out anything you could not move.
• Take more than one photo. A wide shot is good for the big picture, and a close shot of one bed is better for choosing plants.

Landscape photos work best, but portrait photos are fine too. Large photos are reduced automatically so the tool stays quick on a phone.

Planning a makeover that works in real life

A preview is only useful if the real garden can match it. Before you commit to what you see on screen, check four things.

Sun and shade

Most vegetables, lavender, sunflowers and roses need at least six hours of direct sun a day. Hydrangeas and many shrubs for shady yards do better with morning sun and afternoon shade. Stand in the spot at different times of day and note how long it stays sunny, or use the sunlight requirement finder to match a plant to the light it gets.

Mature size

The plants in a garden center are small, and a shade tree can grow 40 feet wide. When you size items in the preview, think about what the plant will look like in five to ten years, not on planting day. Give trees room away from the house, the fence and the power lines, and leave space between shrubs so air can move through them.

Spacing

Crowded plants compete for water and invite disease, while sparse plantings leave room for weeds. The plant spacing calculator tells you how many plants fit in a bed at the spacing each one needs, which helps you turn a picture of a flower bed into a real shopping count.

Your hardiness zone

The plants in this tool are common choices across the United States, but not every plant thrives in every USDA zone. Check the zone range on a plant tag or your local extension service before you buy, and plan your planting dates around your last spring frost using the frost date tool.

Makeover ideas for common yard problems

A bare front yard with no curb appeal

Start with a bed along the front of the house. Place a flower bed under the windows, add a round shrub or two on each side of the door, and put a small flowering tree off to one side to soften a corner. A strip of mulch between the lawn and the bed gives a clean edge. Slide to the after view and check that the front door and the windows are still easy to see.

A small backyard

In a small space, every item has to earn its place. Use a paver patio for a seating area, a bench against the fence, and tall plants such as sunflowers or a trellis with a vine to draw the eye upward. Keep the center open so the yard feels bigger, and put the largest item at the back so the rest of the yard looks deeper.

A shady corner

Try a hydrangea, a planter pot, a boulder and a bird bath, and use mulch or gravel instead of lawn, since grass struggles in deep shade. Because the tool does not model sunlight, check the shade with the 3D landscape designer before you buy plants.

A plain fence line

A hedge or a row of ornamental grass along a fence hides it and adds privacy. A trellis with a vine gives you a green wall in a narrow space, and a picket fence segment helps you see how a low fence changes the look of a bed or a garden entrance.

A patch of tired lawn

Replace the worst patch with a flower bed or a gravel area edged with stepping stones. Smaller lawns mean less mowing and less water, and a curved bed edge looks more natural than a straight one. If you would rather keep the grass, use the lawn patch item to see how a healthier, greener area changes the look of the yard.

A first vegetable garden

Place a raised bed in the sunniest part of the yard and keep it near a water source. A single 4 by 8 foot bed is a good starting size. Once you like the placement, work out how much soil it needs with the raised bed soil calculator, and the raised bed lumber cut list tells you how to cut the boards.

Making the picture look right

The tool draws items from a flat front view, so a few simple habits make the result look more natural:

• Use depth. Items lower in the photo look closer, so make them bigger. Items higher in the photo look farther away, so make them smaller. Items near the bottom of the picture are drawn in front of items higher up.
• Flip to avoid repeats. When you duplicate a plant, the copy is flipped and drawn slightly differently, so a row of the same shrub does not look copied.
• Layer your planting. Put tall items at the back, medium shrubs in the middle and low flowers or ground cover at the front, the same way you would plant a real bed.
• Odd numbers look natural. Groups of three or five tend to look better than pairs or evenly spaced rows, except for a formal hedge or a symmetrical front entrance.
• Do not fill every space. Empty lawn and open paving give the eye a place to rest. A yard with room to breathe usually looks better than one packed with every item.

Turning your preview into a shopping list and budget

The list in the side panel counts what you used. Use it as the start of a shopping list, then fill in quantities with the matching calculators. A flower bed becomes a plant count with the plant spacing calculator, a mulch area becomes cubic yards with the mulch calculator, and a raised bed becomes a soil quantity. When you have the numbers, the garden cost calculator helps you set a budget, so you can decide what to do now and what to leave for next season.

Many people do a makeover in stages. A good order is to build the structure first, such as beds, paths and the patio, then plant trees and shrubs, and finally add flowers and decorations. Spreading the work over a season or two makes the cost easier to manage, and you can use the tool again to see how the yard looks after each stage.

Share your before and after

Press Download makeover to save your design as a picture, or Download before and after to save the original and the makeover side by side with Before and After labels. Both are regular PNG images that you can post, print or send to a landscaper, a contractor or a neighbor to explain your idea. If you would rather not have a credit on the picture, untick Add a small Garden Voila credit before you download.

If you are sharing your plans with a professional, the side by side image is a quick way to show what you want. Pair it with the shopping list from the side panel and you have a short brief that saves a lot of explaining.

Privacy: what happens to your photo

Your photo is opened and edited entirely in your own browser. It is not uploaded to Garden Voila or to any other server, and it is not stored after you close the page. Because nothing is saved, the tool warns you before you leave or change the photo if you have a design you have not downloaded. Download your makeover when you are happy with it.

What this tool is and what it is not

This is a visual planning aid. It helps you decide what you like and gives you a picture to share, but it does not measure your yard, model sunlight or check plant spacing for you. Items are drawn in a friendly illustrated style rather than photographed, so the result shows the idea rather than a perfect rendering. For measured layouts, try the garden layout generator, and for a walk-through of your design in three dimensions, try the 3D garden builder.

Frequently asked questions