Year one blooms. Year ten turns.
The month pills work at every year on the slider, and the years matter. A whip blooms in its first spring. It takes five or six before there is enough tree to turn. Every frame below is the same sample plan rendered by the studio.
Plant for the months you are actually outside
Most yards are designed for one week in May at the nursery. Then the bloom is over and the yard goes plain green until frost. Pick one plant for each stretch of the year instead. A serviceberry for April. A black gum for October. A screen of arborvitae for the months in between. The month pills let you check that every month has something to look at before you buy any of it.
Fall color is a placement decision
Fall color is the one thing a plant tag shows honestly, and it is still easy to waste. A black gum turns scarlet whether or not you can see it from the kitchen window. Place the tree where the October view actually lands, then tap Oct and check. Color also comes late in warm zones and early in cold ones. Enter your ZIP and the fall window shifts to match.
The evergreens carry winter
Winter is not on the pills yet, but it is in the design. Roughly a third of the structure should be evergreen. Arborvitae along the fence and boxwood at the bed edge hold the picture from November to March while everything else is bare sticks. The summer view is the test. If the yard still reads as a design with the color turned off, it will read in January too.
Color is cheap. The calendar is the work.
None of this is expensive. A serviceberry whip and a black gum whip are a few dollars each, and the row of arborvitae is the biggest line on the list. What costs money is a yard that peaks for one week in May because nobody checked the other eleven months. Spread the plants across the year instead. Put the trees that bloom and the trees that turn in the ground the same weekend as the evergreens, so the frame is there before the picture is. A year-by-year plan with a shopping list, ready to hand a nursery, is exactly what the printable Painted Acre report gives you.
The seasons plan · Zone 6a Ohio
Year 1
Every season, planted at once
Green Giant Arborvitae × 73 ft stock · 5 ft spacing, back fence
Serviceberry × 2 + Redbud × 1whips · the April bed
Black Gum × 1 + River Birch × 1whips · the October pair, out in the open
Flowering Dogwood × 15 gal · at the near corner
To do this year
Tap Oct before you dig: can you see the black gum from the house?
Stake the whips for one year only
Water the arborvitae weekly through the first two summers
Year 3
The first October
Limb the birch up so the bark shows
Mulch the beds. Nothing to buy.
Year 10
The check-in
Thin the serviceberry so the blossom reads
By year 12: the arborvitae is a wall. Decide if you want it that tall.
From the sample plan's printable report. Everything goes in the first year. The seasons do the rest.
The month-by-month palette, painted
Each of these is painted at every age, in leaf, in bloom and in fall color. Each one shows its bloom only in the months it really blooms. Enter your ZIP and those months shift to your zone.
Serviceberry
White blossom in April before the leaves. Orange and red in October. The first tree to do anything each year.
Zones 4–820 ft
Eastern Redbud
Pink flowers on bare wood in early spring. Clear yellow in fall.
Zones 4–922 ft
Flowering Dogwood
White bracts in April. Deep red leaves in October. Two seasons from one small tree.
Zones 5–920 ft
Black Gum (Tupelo)
Nothing to say all summer. Then the best scarlet on the street.
Zones 4–945 ft
River Birch
Peeling bark all year. Butter yellow leaves in fall.
Zones 4–940 ft
Green Giant Arborvitae
The evergreen wall behind everything. It is the reason the picture still works in January.
Zones 5–840 ft
What to expect, honestly: Year 1: sticks with a few flowers on them. April looks like April even on a whip. Year 5: the dogwood and redbud carry April. The black gum starts to carry October. Year 10: every month pill changes the whole picture.
Questions people ask
▸Can I see my yard in fall before I plant it?
Yes. Upload a photo, place the trees and shrubs, grow the yard, then tap Oct above the year slider. The same design repaints with each plant in its autumn color. You can try it on a sample yard first, and no account is needed.
▸Which months can it show?
April through October, at any year on the slider. Each month shows the plants that bloom in that month in bloom, and the trees that turn in that month in color. A plant that flowers only in June shows its flowers only in June. November through March are not painted yet.
▸Does it know when things bloom where I live?
Enter your ZIP and every bloom window shifts to your USDA zone. A redbud that flowers in March in Georgia flowers in May in Minnesota, and the month pills follow that. Fall color moves the other way. It comes later in warm zones.
▸Does a month cost anything?
No. Months are drawn from the painted sprites, so switching between them is free once the yard is grown. Finishing a month as one unified watercolor uses a repaint, the same as finishing any year.
▸What do I get at the end?
The growth view from year one to year twenty with the month pills on every year, a before and after of the same view, and a printable report with a to-scale plan view from above, a year-by-year plan and a shopping list with price estimates. Exports and the printed plan show the summer view.
