Printing & Exporting
Turn your design into a printable planting plan with numbered callouts, a plant list, and a scale legend — ready for the nursery or the garden bed.
How it works
The Create Printable Plan button (the printer icon at the top of the editor) opens your design in a new browser window, formatted for paper. From there you use your browser's print dialog (Ctrl/Cmd + P) to print it directly, or save it as a PDF — same dialog, just pick "Save as PDF" as the destination.
This means there's no separate download — the plan is just a tidy web page that happens to print beautifully. If your browser blocks the new window, allow popups for the app and try again.
The plan dialog
When you tap Create Printable Plan, a small dialog opens with three decisions:
Scope
- Whole garden (the default) — fits your entire design onto a single page. The plan auto-orients itself: landscape if the garden is wider than it is deep, portrait if it's taller.
- Visible area — prints just what you can see in the 2D canvas right now. Useful for very large or very dense gardens where the whole-garden view would be hard to read at a glance. Zoom and pan the 2D canvas first to frame the section you want, then open the dialog.
If your garden is large or unusually dense, the dialog will suggest the visible-area option for you.
Include the full plant list
When you choose visible-area scope, a toggle appears to also include the full plant list on a second page. On by default — most people want the whole plant list even when the diagram is focused on a slice of the garden.
Grid lines
The 1-foot/30.5 cm grid is shown by default to help with measurement. You can toggle it off if you prefer.
What's on the printable plan
The plan is designed to be useful both at the nursery and back at the garden bed. You'll get:
- Garden name and date at the top.
- Scaled diagram showing every plant. Each plant gets a number, and the numbers are laid out in a CAD-style: a single plant gets a numbered disc stamped on top, while a tight group of the same plant gets a leader line out to a numbered chip with a ×count badge.
- Plant list in two columns, sorted alphabetically: number, common name, scientific name, and quantity.
- Scale legend showing "1 square = 1 foot" (or "= 30.5 cm", depending on your unit setting).
Tips
- Before you open the dialog, take a last look at the 2D canvas — anything blocking the view of a plant (a background image at low opacity, an overlapping shape) will appear in the printed diagram too.
- If the diagram looks too small and hard to read in the printout, switch to Visible area and zoom 2D in on the section you care about — you'll get a larger, more legible diagram with the whole plant list still on page two.
Tiers and pricing
Printing your full garden plan is a subscription feature — you need a Gardener account to print any garden. But there's a one-time route for demos too.
- Gardener — unlimited printing. Print any of your gardens as often as you'd like.
- Demo — opening the dialog shows two paths:
- Start a Gardener trial — 14 days free, then $39/year if you keep it.
- One-time export for $9 — buy printing for the current demo garden only. Once paid, that specific garden can be printed, no subscription needed. Demo gardens expire after 24 hours if you don't sign up for an account, so you must print your plan before the end of that 24 hour window.
If a Gardener subscription has lapsed or been cancelled, your account moves to a view-only state. You can see see your garden plans, but printing is paused until you resubscribe.
Troubleshooting
Nothing happens when I tap Create Printable Plan
Most often, your browser blocked the popup window. Look for a popup-blocked icon in the address bar, allow popups for the app, and try again.
The diagram is too small to read
For large or busy gardens, switch the scope to Visible area, zoom and pan the 2D canvas to frame the section you want, then open the dialog again. The diagram will fill the page and the full plant list still rides along on page two.
The Create Printable Plan button is greyed out
This usually means your account is in view-only state — a lapsed trial, a cancelled subscription, or a checkout that's still pending. Hovering the button explains why; resubscribing restores printing. If you're sure none of those apply, drop me a note.
Where to go next
- Creating your first garden — the workflow that leads up to a printable plan
- 2D Design Tools — zoom, pan, and the editor controls you'll use to frame a visible-area print