United StatesHOME OUTSIDE®: Landscape Design for Everyone ***As featured in The New York Times, Fox News, USA Today, Gardenista, and more*** “Home Outside allows you to create intricate and varied landscapes. And when you’re finished designing your yard or indulging in a little dreamscaping, you can e-mail results to friend.” –Kate Murphy, The New York Times “I can’t imagine a designer who wouldn’t want to have this on their phone or tablet. I’ve tried this app … it’s a great tool for a ‘quickie’ design that you can show clients and then refine as you like.” –Jane Berger, Garden Design Online Home Outside® is a landscape design app with all the tools you need to mock up your property, create new designs, and share them with friends and family. Ideal for homeowners who want to try out fresh ideas for their yard. Useful for landscape professionals to share designs with clients and contractors. Also perfect for children and adults alike to exercise their imagination and creativity! Use Home Outside to select and place over 700 beautiful hand-drawn elements including trees, gardens, pools, patios, hammocks, driveways, houses and sheds, solar panels, and just about anything you might want for your property. Features include: • Sample designs to inspire or get you started • Simple tap-and-drag functionality • Twenty-nine palettes (700+ elements) to create your landscape design layout • Resize, Rotate, Undo/Redo, Duplicate, Flip, Group • Rotate elements with “Snap to 90” or turn off to rotate more precisely • Snap to grid (elements stick to a re-sizable grid of guidelines, turn on/off in Settings) • Rulers (visible at edges of design; zoom in to the single unit; user selects feet/meters; can be turned on/off) • Choose from 15 different background colors • Sketch Tool (allows users to draw garden beds and other free-form shapes with an eraser and brushes of different colors, widths and opacity) • Map Tool (This mapping tool based on Google Maps allows you to outline your property and import the map image with measurements into the app as a layer.) • North arrow (appears with Map Tool) • Site Analysis palettes to mark the locations of your site’s utilities and light and moisture conditions • Notes (allows users to tag elements in their designs with typed comments or descriptions) • Light/Dark mode (changes Note tags and North arrow from white to black for visibility against light backgrounds.) • Animated Figures (a palette of animated elements—a person, dog, cat, bird, and car—that move through your design on a looped or repeating path, adjustable speed, play and stop animation) • Import a Photo as a layer (useful for importing a digital image of your property plan) • Create different Layers of elements in your design. Add, delete, rename layers, make each layer visible/invisible, lock/unlock for editing, and reorder layer position. • In-app Design Primer by Julie Moir Messervy • Designs automatically save to the app’s Designs gallery • Email an editable design so friends can edit one another’s designs and email them back and forth
Ok but could be better…
This app could be great but there are drawbacks. Simple things such as changing the size of the item makes it frustrating to design. An item’s size can change but not the width and length separately. For instance putting in a fence is immensely time consuming. Individual small fence sections must be added to create the appropriate length. And they don’t link to each other. Trying to get everything lined up is ridiculous. I would love it if you clicked on the item (ie: fence) and a box pops up that you could add the correct measurement and it automatically created the fence to the appropriate length. Along with having certain items link would make the design process more efficient. I would enjoy more options for items. In trying to put a garden bed in there was no brown option for shapes. instead of having to scroll through many different shapes in multiple colors, it would be quicker to have many different shapes options then just choose the color from a color wheel. I also wish the paths and patios could adjust the shape as well… a free form type option. I appreciate the layer buttons and locking layers comes in handy but it would be helpful to set each individual item’s layer. The menu could be more efficient as well. It always takes you back to the main menu instead of where you left off. Or if you back out of a subheading you’re back at the main menu again. For instance if I’m in pathways and I back out it doesn’t take me to hardscapes it takes me to the main menu again. More item options would be nice, especially in hardscapes and structures. The app works fine it’s just not very efficient. A few changes would make it more user friendly.
United StatesNot more useful than other tools
I bought this hoping for the squarespace of landscape design. I’m a graphic designer and I’ve used graph paper to draw to scale, I’ve used procreate, I’ve used illustrator…I wanted more pre-built options where I could adjust the shape of a flowerbed for example, enter actual dimensions and get something to drop plants etc into. This interface just felt like it wanted to sort of be like procreate but clunkier. Lots of steps. No useful tool tips or tutorial videos to get started. The FAQ kind of helped but not really. I can draw faster on my iPad or on paper than I can use this app so I regret spending the money and won’t be using it.
United StatesFor what it is
I like this app for what it is. I wanted a simple app that allowed me to see the space I’m working with. I enjoy sketching out my own property for projects, gardening, playground, homesteading. This app is great for on the go and allows me to leave a sketch pad and ruler at the house. The reason for a 3 and not a 5 is for the limited varieties of plants and equipment. It is helping me visualize my goal, but I still need an active imagination to see the plans in my head. I like the 2d sketch and that part is enough for me. It’s an easy to use program and I do not regret the purchase. I don’t think this is the app for a landscaping business unless you are wanting to quickly map a worksite for a customer who lacks the ability to visualize your basic placement of objects.
United StatesNice!
I really like this app. I thought it would help me in positioning additional shrubbery in my cottage garden. It was perfect for that. I also put a few additions on the house and that worked well too. It’s nice to see the design I was planning from a different perspective. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of use out of this app.
United StatesTotally unimpressed
I realize that this is a low cost graphics app BUT it is basically unusable. All work in in portrait mod because it does not rotate. Added items can be resized but they keep the XY proportions. All drawing is pencil and there is no straight line mode. Glad I did not spend much.
United StatesVery limited
Easy to use, but almost cartoonish design library of plants and structures.
United States?
Downloaded the app checked it out didn’t do what I needed it to do deleted it then comes next month and they charged my card $3.17 why? I’m unsure and I would like my money back they took unauthorized
United States
Apr 24, 2024
Apr 23, 2024
Apr 22, 2024
Minor bug fixes.
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