This free container garden layout planner helps you plan a container plan for a patio, with pot counts from your patio size and pot diameter. It runs fully in your browser, needs no account, and gives a clear plan in seconds, so you can stop guessing and start with dates and numbers you can trust. It is made for home gardeners, not for professional growers, and every field is explained in plain words on the tool itself.
To use it, fill in the fields above and press the button. The tool checks your numbers, runs the calculation, and shows the result right below the tool, together with a simple drawing of your plan where a drawing applies. If a number looks wrong, change it and press the button again. Nothing is saved on a server, and you can use the tool as many times as you like, for one bed or for many.
It fits circles into a rectangle using simple division. Pots along the length are the patio length in inches divided by the pot diameter, rounded down, and pots across the width use the same rule. Multiplying the two counts gives the total pots that fit without overlap. The canvas drawing shows the pots as circles on the patio outline, so you can see walking space before you buy pots.
For example, a 10 by 6 foot patio with 12 inch pots fits 10 pots along the length and 6 across, 60 pots in total. With 18 inch pots, an 8 by 4 foot patio fits only 5 by 2, 10 pots, which is a better match for large crops like tomatoes.
Reading the result is simple: take the headline dates or counts as your starting point, then check them against what you know about your own garden. Soil, sun, rain and local frost all change from one garden to the next, so a tool result is a strong guide, not a promise, and your own judgement still matters for the final decision.
Match pot size to the crop, not to the patio: tomatoes need at least 40 litres, while herbs thrive in 5 litres. Always use pots with drainage holes, because roots sitting in water rot fast.
A common mistake is trusting a single plan and never checking it again. Re-run the tool when your frost dates change, when you change the size of a bed, or when a crop fails, because stale plans quietly lead to crowded beds and missed sowing windows. Keep a short note of each result with the crop name and the date, so you can compare one season with the next without searching through old messages.
Over the next few weeks, use this tool as part of a simple weekly routine. Set aside a short time each week to check your beds, water what needs water, and review what the plan says should happen next. A pattern over several weeks is far more useful than one good or bad day, because it shows which crops grow well in your soil, which beds stay too wet, and where your time actually goes. Small steady habits, repeated every week, build a garden that is easier to run and easier to enjoy, and this tool is meant to make one small part of that routine faster and clearer.
This tool gives estimates for everyday garden planning only and does not replace professional growing advice. Use it to plan, to compare and to keep clear records, and ask a local expert when a decision involves large costs, rare plants or plant health problems. Try it with your own numbers now, and come back whenever a new bed, a new crop or a new season needs a quick, honest plan.