Garden Designer

Garden Designer is a quiet garden-planning toy with nothing to win and no clock running. You look down on a small rectangular plot from a slight angle, the way you would from an upstairs window: lawn tipped away from you, a soft shadow under the whole plot, a hedge and a fence line behind it. Everything is drawn as clean vector shapes with soft shadows and one consistent light from the upper left, so a bed of soil, a stone path and a pond all sit together without a single photograph or texture in sight.

Nine brushes lay the ground. Lawn, flagstone path, gravel, pond, flower bed and timber decking each paint on in soft organic shapes — a pond you brush freehand comes out as a pond, not a grid of blue squares — and the fence brush stands up posts and rails wherever you drag. Then there are fifty-one pieces to place, sorted into Trees, Shrubs, Flowers, Veg and Garden: oaks, birches, pines, cherry, apple and willow; box balls, lavender, hydrangeas, ferns and roses; tulips, daffodils, sunflowers, poppies, lupins and irises; tomatoes, pumpkins, beans, sweetcorn and rhubarb; and a bench, a greenhouse, a shed, lanterns, a birdbath, stepping stones, a rose arch, a parasol table, a wheelbarrow, a fire pit and a swing seat. Tap a piece, tap the plot, and it lands there. Drag it anywhere, turn it with R, make it bigger or smaller, duplicate it, or take it away again — thirty steps of undo are always behind you.

Press play and the garden walks through a full year in about forty seconds: cherry blossom opens and falls, lavender and roses come out for the summer, the maples turn, and then snow settles on the shed roof, the pond ices over and the trees stand bare. The season button steps the year on one notch at a time if you would rather hold it still. The sun button turns evening on, and every lantern, the fire pit and the greenhouse start to glow while fireflies come out over the lawn. Leaves sway in a gentle wind, butterflies wander the beds and the pond never quite stops rippling. Keep up to six gardens in your browser, download a picture of any of them, and otherwise just potter about and relax — it works with a mouse, with the keyboard and with a finger, in portrait on a phone or wide on a desktop.