Why your planting plan looks like a spreadsheet
Most planting plans are born in a spreadsheet, and it shows. Rows of botanical names, quantities, container sizes — accurate, complete, and absolutely unreadable for the person who has to fall in love with the garden.
A planting plan has two jobs. One is logistics: what to buy, how many, what size. The other is persuasion: this is the garden, this is the feeling, this is why it costs what it costs. The spreadsheet does the first job and quietly sabotages the second.
The fix isn't prettier cells. It's separating the documents: a presentation the client scrolls and approves, and a legend the nursery fills. Same data, two readers, two designs. When the two are generated from one source, they can't drift apart — and you stop maintaining both by hand.
About the author
Notes from the team building db.garden — and the designers we build it with.
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