Design your yard from a photo

We uploaded the front-yard photo to Sow on the web with a brand-new free account, chose Style Design and the Cottage style, and clicked Create 1 design. The render itself finished in under a minute; the gallery showed it between 90 and 150 seconds after submitting, with no progress bar in between.

The design came back titled "Romantic Cottage Walkway" with five unique plants: Rose 'Buff Beauty', 'Duchesse de Nemours' peony, Camelot Lavender foxglove, Baltic parsley and Snowflake catmint. The house, the walkway, the bird feeder and the pine straw were all kept. Each plant name on the card links to its catalog page, and the card carries Save-plant buttons, a Shopping List, Download, Preview and Continue editing.

The backyard photo went through the same flow and came back as "Romantic Cottage Haven": Silas Marner English rose, common foxglove and checker mallow among its five plants, in a continuous mulched bed along the fence. The fence and both young trees were kept.

The patchy lawn was left exactly as photographed, so the result reads as beds added rather than a whole yard fixed. That is worth knowing before you upload a lawn you want replaced.

This is the question that separates a design from a picture. Sow draws from 12,000+ real outdoor plants, each with zone, sun, mature size, bloom and care data, and it filters by your hardiness zone before anything is drawn. Zone matching covers the US, Canada, the UK and Australia.

Light matters as much as zone, and here the two versions of Sow differ. On the phone, each space you create carries its sun exposure and zone, and the Auto Design sheet pre-fills a sunlight chip from it. Our front-yard run on iPhone was set to part sun and came back with The Fairy Rose, Foxglove Sugar Plum, Hawera daffodil and anemone: sensible picks for a bed under pines.

On the web, Goal Design lets you describe the light in your brief, and Help Me Choose in Design Studio asks for style, zip code, plant roles and a sunlight preference before it recommends anything.

Yes, and this is the part most photo tools skip. On the phone, Edit design opens a sheet with a Change a plant chip for each species, a text box for instructions such as "add a stone path", Try a new look restyles (Golden Hour, Volumetric, Winter, Nighttime and Future growth), and two ways to edit by hand: the Plant Editor, where you drag plants, furniture, lighting and paving onto the design and place them yourself, and the Plant Designer, where you choose the plants and Sow paints them in.

Tap any species chip and you get Remove, Fewer, More and Swap, with the count in this design and the botanical name alongside. Eight Fairy roses become fewer, or become a different rose, without redrawing anything.

On the web, Continue editing opens the render in Design Studio as the canvas, with a plant and object library, Objects and Furniture, quick filters for Native, Full Sun, Shade, Deer, Drought and Pollinators, and cut-outs you place over the image by hand. Place every plant. Down to the inch.

A design you like is a start. Sow then carries the same plants into the tools that get them into the ground. On mobile, the Plants list under a design shows every species with its botanical name and quantity: on our front yard, The Fairy Rose x8, Foxglove Sugar Plum x28, Hawera daffodil x66 and anemone x14. Save all adds them to your library in one tap.

Planting Plans works from above. Sow finds the beds in a satellite view of your yard on its own, then fills each one with a planting plan you can tweak. Each bed shows its area, sun and plant count, four layout styles (Layered, Drifts, Rows and Edged), and plant chips with counts, swap and remove. Our test address came back with 17 beds across its spaces.

Sow also checks 18 online nurseries every day for prices and deals, and every plant in a design links straight to where you can buy it at the lowest price it found.

Share, Whole plan, Save PDF opens Review Costs: plant, quantity, an editable unit price and an estimated cost per species, bed subtotals, and an estimated total at the bottom. That is the priced, quantified plant schedule, and it is the part most photo tools never reach.

Most design tools end at the image. Sow keeps the design alive. Each space tracks what is planted, what is blooming and what needs doing. Care reminders are timed to your climate and the plants you actually own: deadhead, divide, prune, water.

A water budget weighs rain in against evaporation out, measured against your area's historic average, and gives a plain answer: water this week, or skip it. Early warnings cover frost, heat and dry spells.

Point your camera at a leaf that looks wrong and Plant Doctor names the problem in plain language and gives you something to do about it this afternoon. The weather-aware care uses US forecasts; outside the US you still get zone matching, the plant data and the design tools, but not the forecast-driven reminders.

You need an account. Web signup is an email and a password, took about 10 seconds in our test. There is no version that runs without signing up, because your designs, spaces and plant library need somewhere to live.

Everyone gets 10 free designs to start, and more free designs for taking part: posting a design earns 25 credits (five designs), a referral 100, and challenges and helpful answers earn credits too.

Pro lifts those limits and adds Planting Plans and the satellite map editor. Web Pro has a 7-day trial or costs $9.99 a month; the App Store subscription is $59.99 a year as an in-app purchase. Pro+ has a 3-day trial, or $29.99 a month, and adds client tools.