Beta Testing Guide
Welcome to the Garden Sketchbook beta! This page contains helpful information and tips to make the most of your testing experience.
Getting Started
Garden Sketchbook is currently in beta. We're so excited to hear your feedback as you test things out. Please note that you might encounter some bugs, rough edges, and general weirdness. If so, please let us know.
What to Expect
Access to all core 2D design
and 3D visualization features
A growing plant library with
hundreds of species and cultivars
Seasonal views showing your garden
through the year
Regular updates and improvements
based on your feedback
Known Limitations
Plants might look funny
Our art is all hand drawn, then programmatically colored and composited based on each plant's characteristics. This lets us render a wide variety of plants with just a handful of basic shapes. For example, allium, azalea, and hydrangea all use the "globe" flower shape.
The renderings rely on info from our plant database, and the plant data is researched with AI. Sometimes errors get through that cause plants to render quirkily. Some flowers also have distinctive shapes that don't fit neatly into a category, such as irises, daffodils, and dahlias. We also have limited support for variegated foliage.
We're working on adding special cases to our art library to render popular plants as accurately as possible. If you notice a plant that doesn't look quite right, please let us know.
We might not have specific plants
We're working on adding plants to our database every day. We're doing our best to select a wide range of popular varieties; we feel there's real value in being able to visualize your garden with the exact plant you want to use.
That said, there are a lot of plants out there! Our upper limit is probably 2,000-4,000 plants, so even in the final version, there is a chance we will not have your specific cultivar.
We have a custom plant feature planned for the future that will let you add plants to your personal plant library. Until then, hopefully you can use the plant filter options to find something close.
Some plant data may be inaccurate
We've put a lot of energy into optimizing our AI research strategy to produce good results. We've crafted a concise yet comprehensive prompt, and we process plants in small batches.
That said, the generated information is not always correct, and if we're not personally familiar with a plant, we might not notice. We will be asking for help from our fellow gardeners to refine our data as we go along.
For now, we recommend double checking the growing conditions and mature size with another trusted source before committing to plants.
You can't draw objects or dimensions (yet)
This would be hugely helpful when planning plantings for an irregularly shaped space, or working around existing structures. We are going to look into this in the future.
For now, please rely on the layout grid to plan your plant spacing; each square represents 1 square foot / approx. 30 square cm.
How to Provide Feedback
Your feedback is invaluable during the beta phase. Please share:
- Bugs or issues you encounter
- Features you'd like to see added
- Plants or cultivars missing from the library
- General usability feedback and suggestions
Contact us through the contact form and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
Tips for Beta Testing
- Start with a simple garden layout to get familiar with the tools
- Experiment with the seasonal views to see how plants change throughout the year
- Try different plant combinations and layouts
- Export your plan regularly
- Report any unusual behavior or errors you encounter
Updates & Changes
We'll be pushing regular updates during the beta period. Check back here for announcements about new features, improvements, and known issues.
Ready to Start?
Jump into the application and start designing your dream garden!
Try it out