Planting Atlas

Your Complete Garden Planning Companion

Whether you're tucking tomatoes into a backyard raised bed in Vermont, designing a pollinator meadow on an Arizona hillside, or setting up your first hydroponic system in a city apartment, Planting Atlas meets you exactly where you are. Every garden starts with a question — what should I grow, and how? — and this site exists to answer it with precision, clarity, and a genuine love of the craft.

We've combined a smart plant-matching engine with an ever-growing library of in-depth growing guides to create the most useful free resource on the web for home gardeners and landscape enthusiasts alike. No paywalls, no account required — just expert guidance, available the moment you need it.

Meet the Garden Architect

The Garden Architect is a step-by-step plant recommendation wizard unlike anything else online. Instead of handing you a generic list and wishing you luck, it asks the questions that actually matter: your USDA hardiness zone, the type of soil in your beds, how much sun your space receives, how often you realistically plan to water, how much room you have to work with, and your experience level. From there, it filters and scores a database of 148 plants across 12 categories — flowers, vegetables, fruits, herbs, trees, shrubs, vines, bulbs, ornamental grasses, succulents, ferns, and groundcovers — to surface the best matches for your exact situation.

Growing hydroponically? The wizard has a dedicated hydroponic path that skips irrelevant outdoor questions — zone, soil, season — and instead asks about your system type (deep water culture, NFT, Kratky, ebb and flow, and more). Every compatible plant is flagged with hydroponic-specific care notes so you know exactly how to succeed without soil.

The result is a personalized plant shortlist with descriptions, care notes, and growing tips — all tailored to your answers. Think of it as a conversation with an experienced master gardener who happens to know every plant in the database.

Explore the Plantopedia

The Plantopedia is our growing library of expert gardening guides — 75+ topics organized into 10 categories that span the full range of what gardeners want to grow and create. From towering shade trees to compact container herb gardens, from wildflower meadows to precision square-foot vegetable beds, every guide is written with real depth: varieties to consider, planting and spacing details, seasonal care calendars, pest and problem notes, harvesting tips, and companion planting recommendations.

Current guide categories include Trees & Large Plants (shade trees, fruit trees, privacy screens, fall color, street trees), Flowers & Color Gardens (pollinator gardens, cottage gardens, moon gardens, cut flower beds, spring bulb gardens, long-blooming perennials), Edible Gardens (salad gardens, pizza gardens, salsa gardens, three sisters, square-foot gardening, edible flowers, children's vegetable gardens), Herbs & Fragrance, and specialty topics like Medicinal Gardens — covering 16 healing herbs from echinacea to elderberry with harvesting, remedy-making, and safety information.

All content is written for a national US audience covering USDA Zones 3 through 11, with zone-specific timing guidance baked into every seasonal calendar. Whether you're gardening in the cold-hardy North, the humid South, the arid Southwest, or the mild Pacific Coast, the guides reference your zone directly so you always know when to plant, when to harvest, and when to prepare for the next season.

New guides are added regularly. Every topic marked "Coming Soon" is actively in development — covering landscape design principles, seasonal care, pest and disease identification, container and small-space gardening, and eco-friendly and sustainable growing practices.

Built for Every Kind of Gardener

Planting Atlas is designed for beginners who want to avoid common first-season mistakes, intermediate gardeners ready to level up their plant selection and garden design, and experienced growers who want a reliable reference at their fingertips. The wizard adapts its recommendations to your experience level, and the guides range from "here's how to get started" basics to deep dives on advanced techniques like tincture-making, companion planting systems, and hydroponic nutrient management.

Gardening is one of the most rewarding skills a person can develop — it connects you to the seasons, puts fresh food on your table, brings pollinators and wildlife into your yard, and transforms outdoor spaces into places you actually want to spend time. Planting Atlas exists to lower the barrier to all of that, for everyone, regardless of experience, climate, or available space.

Use the Garden Architect to find your perfect plants, and the Plantopedia to learn how to grow them well. Plan it. Plant it. Grow it.