Garden Planner on your Mac — 3.8.86

The 3D view in Garden Planner 3.8.86 lets you walk through your garden before you dig a single hole. That is the feature that usually hooks my after-class game club members who are also planning real-world projects. But before you start arranging plants and paths, let us check whether this app will actually run on your Mac.

Works on any Mac from 2011

• macOS version: OS X 10.7 or later (works on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs)
• Interface language: English
• Architecture: native for both Intel and Apple Silicon

If your Mac can run anything from 2011 onwards, you are set. No special graphics card needed.

Drag-and-drop 2D design with 3D preview

You design in 2D and switch to the 3D view to see how the light falls. The drag-and-drop library holds plants, trees, buildings, and objects; you can rotate, duplicate, scale, and reshape each element. User-defined settings let you save your own preferences for frequently used items. This latest version adds new path styles and includes general improvements and bug fixes.

Starting with settings worth changing first

When you open Garden Planner for the first time, the default layout is clean and straightforward. Before you place a single plant, there are a few settings I recommend adjusting, based on how the app works.

The library of more than 1,200 plants and objects is the heart of the app. Instead of scrolling through the full list every time, open a new project and apply your own user-defined settings to the items you use the most. For example, if you work with roses and gravel paths regularly, you can set their default sizes and colors once. That way every rose you drag onto the plan already matches your preferences.

The drawing tools for paths, paving, walkways, walls, fences, pools, and ponds have their own default thicknesses and styles. If you are planning a formal garden with straight lines, set the path tool to a straight-line mode first. For cottage gardens, set it to a freeform curve. The latest path styles added in version 3.8.86 give you more visual options, so take a moment to see which ones suit your design style before you start drawing.

Under the text tools, you can prepare labels for beds, borders, or structures. Adding a short text description early in the process makes the final printed plan easier to read, especially if you are handing it to someone else.

Export plans as JPEG or PNG for Pages and Keynote

Garden Planner works well alongside a few everyday macOS tools. When you finish a plan, export it as a JPEG or PNG image file. Those files can be dropped into a Pages or Keynote document for a presentation or a project report. The 3D walkthrough view also captures well with the macOS screenshot tool if you want a quick visual to share with a client or a gardening group.

The object report feature is useful here. You can generate a list of everything in your project — every tree, every paving stone, every fence post. Save that list as a CSV file, and you can open it in Numbers or a spreadsheet app. That makes it simple to calculate costs, count materials, or sort plants by type. The same report can be printed directly or saved as a plain TXT file if you prefer a simpler format.

Because the app runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs natively, it plays nicely with macOS gestures and multitasking. You can keep a reference photo or a garden catalog open in Split View while you work on your plan. No performance surprises on modern hardware.

New path styles for walkways and paving

The jump to version 3.8.86, released in July 2026, focused on two things: new path styles and the usual set of improvements and bug fixes. In practice, that means the drawing tools for walkways and paving now offer more variety. If you previously felt limited to straight lines and basic curves, the new styles give you more visual choices without needing to export the plan and edit elsewhere.

The general improvements and bug fixes in this update affect day-to-day stability and how the app handles the library of plants and objects. For instance, if you work with a large project that has many elements, the drag-and-drop actions should feel more responsive. The 3D view for garden walkthroughs also benefits from these fixes — fewer visual glitches when you rotate or zoom.

For those who use the object report regularly, the process of saving to CSV or TXT has been smoothed out. Small fixes in how the report handles custom-named objects mean your exported lists come out correctly the first time. And for anyone who prints plans, the high-quality printing and preview screen now matches what you see in the 2D view more closely.

• New path styles added
• General improvements and bug fixes

• macOS: OS X 10.7 or later
• Architecture: Intel and Apple Silicon
• Interface: English