Product Guides

Getting Started with AgroForest Designer

AgroForest Designer helps you research plants, assemble reusable planting recipes, describe a site as a project, and turn those choices into a visual…

9 minutes read

AgroForest Designer helps you research plants, assemble reusable planting recipes, describe a site as a project, and turn those choices into a visual planting plan. This guide follows the complete first-design workflow and explains how the main parts of the application relate to each other.

The application supports design decisions, but it does not replace a site survey, local ecological knowledge, professional advice, or verification of plant safety and legal requirements. Check important measurements, boundaries, plant properties, and implementation quantities independently.

Before you begin

You can explore much of the plant library without an account. Public visitors can use Search plants, browse the Plant database, inspect plant details, and review the pollinator tools.

On Search plants and Plant database, use Common names to choose English, Dutch, or French plant names. The rest of the interface remains English. The browser remembers a public visitor's choice; if you create an account in the same browser, that choice is offered during onboarding and can be changed later under Profile > Preferences.

Sign in when you want to keep your work. An account is required to create or manage planting recipes, cultivars, projects, and saved planting plans. Your account also determines which advanced features and how much saved content are available. The values shown under Usage on the Dashboard and under Subscription are the current source of truth; this documentation does not repeat fixed limits.

For detailed map work, use a modern desktop browser with JavaScript enabled. Location permission is optional: it is only needed if you choose a control that uses your current position.

Understand the main building blocks

The application uses five connected kinds of information:

  1. Plants are species records in the shared plant database. They contain names, growing conditions, dimensions, functions, and other reference information where available.
  2. Cultivars are named varieties connected to a parent plant. A cultivar can hold values that differ from the general species record, such as dimensions or harvest dates.
  3. Planting recipes are reusable plant palettes. A standard planting recipe can contain species and your selected cultivars and can be connected to one or more projects.
  4. Projects represent real or proposed sites. A project stores its location, boundary, site information, connected recipes, and planting plans.
  5. Planting plans are saved, map-based layouts inside a project. A project can contain several alternatives or phases.

The recipe library also contains Pollinator recipe records. These are built from flowering records in the Pollinator Plant Database and are used in Flowering Arc comparisons. They are not standard planting recipes, cannot be connected to a project, and do not provide a plant palette to the Digital Planting Plan.

Find your way around

After signing in, the Dashboard is the quickest place to resume work. It can show your latest planting plan, recent projects and recipes, and current Usage. Select Continue designing on the latest plan to return directly to it, or select New project to start a site.

The main navigation separates workspaces from reference material:

  • Projects opens all of your saved sites.
  • Design starts the new-project wizard directly.
  • Library > Plants and recipes contains Search plants, Plant database, Cultivars, the pollinator tools, and All recipes.
  • Resources > Procurement opens your purchase-list versions and private nursery library.
  • Subscription shows the access currently available to your account.
  • Documentation is under Resources.

On a smaller screen, open the navigation menu before looking for these entries.

Follow the first-design workflow

A dependable manual workflow is:

  1. Research suitable plants.
  2. Create a standard planting recipe.
  3. Create a project and draw its site boundary.
  4. Connect the recipe to the project.
  5. Create, name, and save a planting plan.

This order is not mandatory. You can create the project first and connect a standard recipe from its detail page. You can also duplicate a public recipe rather than starting with an empty one.

Step 1: research suitable plants

Open Library > Plants and recipes and choose one of these routes:

  • Plant database displays the catalogue by vegetation layer and is useful for broad browsing.
  • Search plants opens Find the right plants for your design, where you can combine name, habitat, function, growth, and rating filters.
  • Pollinator plants focuses on flowering periods and recorded pollinator value.

Open a plant to review the full record. Database values can be incomplete and describe general tendencies rather than a guaranteed response at your site. Start with a broad shortlist, then verify the candidates against your climate, microclimate, soil, water, available space, maintenance system, and intended use.

When you are signed in, you can add plants directly to a selected recipe from search results or from the plant detail page. See Finding Plants for the complete search and recipe-workbench workflow.

Step 2: create a standard planting recipe

Open Library > Plants and recipes > All recipes. The Planting Recipes page provides two starting points:

  • New recipe creates an empty standard planting recipe manually.
  • Explore public recipes lets you inspect shared work and save an independent copy when copying is allowed.

For a manual recipe:

  1. Select New recipe.
  2. Enter a clear name and, where useful, a description of the purpose, site type, layer, or management goal.
  3. Save the recipe.
  4. Add species from Search plants.
  5. Open the recipe and review the plant cards.
  6. Add your own cultivar selections when the exact variety matters.

Useful names describe intent, for example “Sunny edible hedge”, “Pond-edge planting”, or “Orchard understory”. A recipe is reusable and is not tied to one project, so avoid putting site-specific instructions in it unless they remain meaningful wherever the recipe is reused.

Check the type label on a recipe card. Only a Planting recipe can be used in the project and planner workflow. See Planting Recipes for recipe management, personalisation, sharing, and reuse.

If New recipe is replaced by Recipe limit reached, or a recipe is shown under Frozen recipes, review Subscription before deleting anything. Deleting a recipe may affect projects that use it.

Step 3: create and map a project

Open Projects and select New Project, or select Design in the main navigation. The project wizard has five stages.

Enter basic data

Give the project a recognisable name and add the available introductory information. Use a separate project when a site has a different location, boundary, or design objective.

Set the location

Set the map to the correct site. You can enter an address, move around the map, or use My location if the browser has permission and your device can provide a useful position.

An address or device location is only a starting point. Compare the map with reliable site information before continuing; map imagery and geocoding can be offset or outdated.

Draw the site boundary

The project needs one usable site-boundary polygon. Choose the free-form or rectangle drawing method, draw the intended design area, and finish the shape. A free-form boundary needs at least three points. Refine misplaced points before continuing.

The boundary controls the map workspace and affects area calculations, placement checks, and automatic generation. It is not a cadastral or legal survey. Use measured coordinates or a professional survey where boundary precision matters.

Add optional soil data

Record known soil type, pH, and moisture information. Leave uncertain values blank rather than presenting an estimate as a measurement. You can update the project when laboratory results or site observations become available.

Review and create the project

Check the name, location, boundary, calculated area, and optional site data before creating the project. If the wizard rejects the boundary, return to the boundary stage and make sure there is exactly one finished polygon with at least three distinct points.

See Projects for ongoing project management. If New Project is unavailable or the Dashboard shows Increase limit, use Plans and Feature Access to review the access shown in your account.

Step 4: connect a recipe to the project

Open the project detail page and select Add Recipe, choose one of your standard planting recipes, and select Add.

Only standard recipes that belong to your account are offered. A pollinator recipe will not appear in this selector. If the required recipe is missing, return to All recipes, confirm its type and ownership, and then reopen the project.

Connected recipes appear in the project's planting-recipe section. Removing a connection stops that recipe from being offered as a project palette, but it is different from deleting the recipe itself. Review existing plans before changing or deleting a recipe that has already been used.

You may connect more than one available recipe to the same project, for example separate palettes for an orchard, hedge, pond edge, and understory.

Step 5: create and save the planting plan

In the project detail page, find Planting plans:

  • if the project has no plan, select Create the first planting plan;
  • if it already has plans, select New planting plan for a separate alternative;
  • select Continue designing on a saved plan to resume it.

For a first plan:

  1. Open Plan hub and select Save planting plan to give the new plan a recognisable name.
  2. Open Planting > Plants and choose a connected recipe.
  3. Place a few plants using Place at crosshair or Choose position.
  4. Check plant footprints, spacing, and the project boundary.
  5. Select Save version and confirm that the save reports success before leaving.

Use separate plan names for alternatives or phases, such as “Initial concept”, “Phase 1”, or “Orchard with wider spacing”. A saved version is safer than relying on the current browser state while testing major changes.

The planner contains many more tools for drawings, paths, automatic generation, analysis, implementation notes, and output. Continue with the Digital Planting Plan guide rather than learning every tool during the first session.

Work safely with account access

Available features and saved-resource capacity depend on the account. A disabled control, lock icon, Recipe limit reached, Increase limit, or read-only item indicates that the current access does not allow that action.

Before deleting work to make room:

  1. Open Dashboard Usage or Subscription.
  2. Identify the resource that is affected.
  3. Check its connected recipes, projects, cultivars, and plans.
  4. Read the deletion confirmation carefully.

Do not assume that deleting a parent item affects only the page currently open. See Plans and Feature Access for account-related troubleshooting.

Troubleshoot the first workflow

Search the scientific name or an English, Dutch, or French common name, remove restrictive filters, and try the genus. Cultivar names are not included in the plant-name search; find the parent species and then open its cultivar library. Signed-in users can submit a reviewed Request plant when a species is genuinely missing.

A recipe is missing from the project selector

Confirm that it belongs to your account and is labelled Planting recipe, not Pollinator recipe. Also check whether the recipe is read-only or otherwise unavailable under the access shown in your account.

The project wizard will not continue

Return to Site boundary and verify that one completed polygon exists. Make sure a free-form shape has at least three points and is not still in drawing mode.

The planner has no plants to select

Return to the project, connect a standard recipe, and check that the recipe contains plants. Then reopen Planting > Plants and select that recipe.

Recent work is not visible

Confirm that the intended project and plan are open. Use the project card or Dashboard Latest planting plan to resume the saved plan, and verify the plan name before continuing. In the editor, select Save version and wait for a success status before closing the page.

Continue learning

After completing the first plan, continue with the guide that matches your next task: