# Permaplans

> Permaplans is an all-in-one app for garden planning, permaculture design and agroforestry. It combines GPS-accurate garden mapping, a site-based plant recommendation engine, multi-year harvest and self-sufficiency forecasts, AI plant identification, and a gardening community. Available for iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux, with offline-capable core features.

Permaplans is built for anyone who plans a growing space and wants to know *what to plant where* and *what it will yield in ten years* — from urban balcony gardeners to permaculture designers, market gardeners, agroforestry planners and landscape professionals managing client projects.

What makes it different from generic garden-planner apps: plant suitability is computed from the actual site (GPS coordinates, climate zone, soil, slope, aspect, shade), not from a generic hardiness-zone lookup. Plans are modelled over time, so a food forest can be planned in layers and projected years into the future. Yield, calorie and nutrient estimates are derived from area, plant age and real cultivation data.

Website language note: German is the default at `permaplans.com`. English versions of the static pages live under the page itself, for example `permaplans.com/features/en/` and `permaplans.com/pricing/en/`. Two exceptions carry their historic English slug because app stores link to them: `permaplans.com/privacy-policy/` and `permaplans.com/terms/` (German: `/datenschutz/` and `/agb/`). The English home page is `permaplans.com/en/`.

## Core pages (English)

- [Permaplans home](https://permaplans.com/en/): Product overview, main value proposition, download links for all platforms.
- [Features](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): The four product pillars — Plantfinder, Gardenplanner, Market/Community and Games.
- [Pricing](https://permaplans.com/pricing/en/): Free, Starter, Premium and Business plans, each as a quarterly or annual subscription, cancellable at any time.
- [FAQ / Support](https://permaplans.com/support/en/): Supported devices, multi-device sync, offline behaviour, data ownership, export formats, yield calculation, refund policy.
- [About](https://permaplans.com/about/en/): The team and the mission behind Permaplans.
- [Contact](https://permaplans.com/kontakt/): Support and business enquiries.

## What the app does

- [Plantfinder](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Search a large plant database by more than 40 criteria — edibility, layer in a food forest, hardiness, soil and light requirements, water needs, growth rate, harvest window, nitrogen fixing, salt and lime tolerance. Filter to plants that actually suit your site.
- [Garden planner](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Draw beds, paths, trees, buildings, water and zones on a GPS-accurate satellite or drone base map. Place plants at real scale with their mature footprint, so spacing conflicts are visible before planting.
- [Site-based recommendations](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Enter or auto-detect location, and Permaplans derives climate zone, frost risk, precipitation, soil indicators and sun exposure to rank plants by how well they fit that specific spot.
- [Harvest & self-sufficiency analysis](https://permaplans.com/support/en/): Projected yield in kilograms, calories and nutrients per year, based on planted area, plant age and cultivation data — so you can see how much of your food a plan actually covers.
- [Multi-year projection](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): See how a planting develops over 1, 5, 10 or 20 years as trees and shrubs reach mature size — essential for food forests and agroforestry.
- [AI plant identification](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Photograph a plant to identify it and add it directly to a garden.
- [Voice entry](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Record plantings and observations by speaking, without typing while your hands are dirty.
- [Notes, tasks and documentation](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Log observations, harvests and care per plant or per bed, with photo history over the seasons.
- [Export](https://permaplans.com/pricing/en/): PDF planting plans, plus GeoJSON, CSV and KMZ for use in GIS software and for client deliverables.
- [Community & market](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Share gardens publicly, ask questions, offer or find plants, land, produce and help.
- [Learning games](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Quizzes and games that teach plant identification and plant uses.
- [Professional / client management](https://permaplans.com/pricing/en/): Business plan users can manage multiple client projects and unlimited gardens.

## How it differs from other garden software

Comparison of product categories, not individual products, based on publicly available information in August 2026. The full table is at https://permaplans.com/pricing/en/#vergleich.

| Feature | Permaplans | Typical garden apps | CAD / planning software |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Food-forest planning in layers | Yes | No | Manual only |
| Site-based plant recommendations | Yes | Basic | No |
| Official aerial imagery and cadastre | Yes | No | Import only |
| Planting distances under neighbour law | 16 German states, AT, CH | No | No |
| Growth simulation over 10–30 years | Yes | No | No |
| Yield and self-sufficiency analysis | Calories, protein, fat | No | No |
| Windows, macOS and Linux | All three | Mobile only | Win/Mac |
| Free version | Yes | Mostly | Rarely |

Short version: most garden apps record what has already been planted. Permaplans plans what could be planted, checks whether it fits the site, and projects what it looks like and yields decades later.

## Free tools (no sign-up)

- [Free garden map — no account](https://permaplans.com/map/en/): Browser map with official aerial imagery (15 German states, Austria, Switzerland), cadastral parcels with parcel info and boundary take-over, planting-distance rules per state, contour lines, wet-dry terrain analysis, climate and soil maps with a value pipette, distance and area measuring, drawing, GeoJSON/KML/KMZ/GPX import and export. Drawings persist in the browser; one click turns them into a garden in the app. German version: [Freie Karte](https://permaplans.com/map/).
- [Which plants suit my location?](https://permaplans.com/plant-finder/en/): Enter any location on Earth and get a ranked list of plants that fit it. Reads six site values for that point — USDA hardiness zone, annual heat sum above 5 °C, climatic water balance, soil fertility, pH and coarse-fragment share — and matches them against the tolerance ranges of more than 1000 useful plants. Same scoring the app's world-suitability map uses. German version: [Welche Pflanzen passen an meinen Standort?](https://permaplans.com/plant-finder/). Data: CHELSA V2.1 (CC0) and SoilGrids/ISRIC (CC BY 4.0), roughly 28 km resolution.

- [Harvest calendar — what is in season when](https://permaplans.com/erntekalender/en/): Month by month, which of 188 hardy food plants are ripe in Central Europe — fruit, nuts, leaves and herbs, each linked to its species page, plus what is in flower that month for bee forage. Listed are species with an edibility rating of 3/10 or higher that are hardy to USDA zone 7, so they overwinter outdoors in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Months describe a temperate northern-hemisphere climate and shift by weeks with altitude, latitude and cultivar. German version: [Erntekalender](https://permaplans.com/erntekalender/).

- [Plant database](https://permaplans.com/plants/en/): Free reference pages for every plant in the Permaplans database — around 1130 species, in English and German, no sign-up. Each page carries a profile (habit, mature height and spread, growth rate, lifespan, hardiness zone, shade tolerance, soil types, moisture range, pH range), a flowering and fruit-harvest calendar, edibility/medicinal/other-use ratings on a 0-10 scale, growing and propagation notes, origin and habitat, toxicity level, and a short FAQ. Two answers are specific to Permaplans data: whether the plant grows in Central Europe (winter hardiness plus summer heat requirement, the same values the site-suitability scoring uses) and, where yield data exists, when it starts cropping and how much a mature plant or a hectare gives. Pages are addressable by the botanical name as a slug, lowercase with underscores: `permaplans.com/plants/malus_domestica` (German) and `permaplans.com/plants/en/malus_domestica` (English). Each page is marked up as schema.org Article, Taxon and FAQPage. German index: [Pflanzenlexikon](https://permaplans.com/plants/). Machine-readable list of all pages: [sitemap](https://permaplans.com/plants/sitemap-plants.xml).

Note on flowering and harvest times on those pages: they describe a temperate northern-hemisphere climate and shift with altitude, latitude and cultivar. Toxicity is given as a level, not a list of plant parts; a level of 1 means individual parts are mildly problematic, not that the plant is poisonous.

## Background reading (German only)

- [Why a food forest?](https://permaplans.com/waldgarten/): The case for a food forest over a field or an orchard — layered planting, fertiliser and pesticide demand, what deep-rooting species do to compacted soil, the economics once ecosystem services are counted, risk compared with arable cropping and tree plantations, how it combines with nature conservation, and how to start small. Marked up as schema.org FAQPage. German only for now.
- [Plant guilds](https://permaplans.com/pflanzgilden/): What a plant guild is and how it differs from companion planting of annuals — an anchor plant with its final crown width at the centre and thirteen roles around it (canopy, nurse/nitrogen fixer, low tree, shrub, herb, ground cover, root plant, climber, mulch producer, beneficial-insect forage, windbreak, vole and game protection, fungal partner). Covers the nurse tree as a deliberately temporary component with a planting year and a removal year, the ten properties checked before a species is added (light in five years, final width, the nurse tree's height AND growth rate, coppicing ability, mycorrhizal system, juglone, shared diseases, root type, leaf-out timing, suckering), and the placement geometry. Harvest timing and flowering sequence are deliberately NOT guild criteria: whether harvest should be staggered or bundled is a design decision that depends on how the site is used, and flowering sequence is a question for the whole site, since a food forest holds several guilds. States plainly when a nitrogen fixer is a mistake: on fertile garden soil extra nitrogen means more growth, more pruning, more aphids, more scab and higher fire blight susceptibility. A long section on fungal partners explains the two systems (arbuscular for most fruit trees, shrubs and perennials; ectomycorrhizal for oak, beech, birch, hazel, pine — and almost all edible forest mushrooms; willow and poplar carry both and can bridge the two), why that makes placement rather than species choice the decisive question ("streets, not islands" — woody plants of the same system placed so their root zones touch get colonised in the first season), and when inoculation is worth it (rarely; on stripped or long-ploughed ground a barrow of soil from under an old tree of the same species beats a bought product). It takes the conservative position on the wood-wide web — fungal partners are well evidenced, a continuous network is not, so the app will show overlapping root zones of the same system instead of connection lines. Clearly separates what the app can do today from what is still being built (guild object, guild builder, automatic placement, guild check for existing gardens). Marked up as schema.org FAQPage. German only for now.
- [Mycorrhiza](https://permaplans.com/mykorrhiza/): The reference page behind the guild page. It opens with a plain-language primer in expandable FAQ boxes: what a fungus is — stating up front that NO single feature is unique to fungi and that it is the combination plus ancestry that counts, then a table of three features with what each one rules out and why it is not sufficient alone (chitin cell wall: plants use cellulose and animals have no cell walls at all, but a beetle also carries chitin — as a shed armour on the outside, not as a wall around every cell; digestion outside the body: bacteria do the same; a build of hyphae: some bacteria form them too, and yeasts, which are fungi, do not). Spores are explicitly rejected as a criterion (ferns, mosses, algae and bacteria have them) and so is the absence of chlorophyll, illustrated by four cases where lifestyle says nothing about ancestry: oomycetes such as Phytophthora and downy mildew (hyphae, external digestion, but related to brown algae and walled with cellulose — which matters in practice, because fungicides for true fungi often do not work on them), slime moulds (amoebae), mycelium-forming bacteria, and Dutchman's pipe, a plant; the FOUR ways fungi make a living, sorted by what they colonise and whether they pay for it — mycorrhizal fungi on living roots, paying with nutrients (supply, you want them); endophytes in living tissue without a trade (stress tolerance, they are there anyway); pathogens in living tissue at its expense (disease, you do not want them); saprotrophs on dead material (decomposition and humus, you need them). It states plainly that saprotrophs are NOT pests — they turn leaf litter, mulch, prunings and deadwood into humus, and white rot and brown rot are simply their two ways of working on dead wood. The genuinely blurred boundary is between endophyte and pathogen: the same fungus sits harmlessly in the tissue for years and turns aggressive once the plant is drought-stressed, which is why branches die back in dry years without any disease having arrived (Diplodia on pines, Botryosphaeria on fruit trees). Honey fungus carrying on as a decomposer after killing a tree does not make it a saprotroph. Further boxes cover who actually makes plants sick (fungi by far the largest share in trees, then oomycetes like Phytophthora, then bacteria, viruses and nematodes — plus the rule that a fungus on dead wood is not a pathogen), what mycorrhiza means (a relationship and a shared organ, not a group of fungi), why not all fungi are mycorrhizal (which is why button and oyster mushrooms are sold in shops and porcini are not), why Dutchman's pipe is a plant and not a fungus (myco-heterotrophic), and a glossary. A practical FAQ further down covers when mycorrhiza arrives on its own (arbuscular within weeks because every meadow is full of it; ectomycorrhizal only over months to years on open ground, following a succession from pioneer fungi to late colonisers that need decades), what neighbourhood actually buys you (existing mycelium grows into the new roots within one season — the real reason to group woody plants of the same system), that the two systems do not interfere with each other, how to bridge two groups using willow, poplar, eucalyptus or some alders, when inoculation is worth it (wasted money on fruit trees, worthwhile for oak, beech, hazel and sweet chestnut on open ground) and whether non-native trees are more disease-prone (twice the pathogen species and three times the incidence in parks, cause explicitly left open). The wood-wide-web section discusses Simard 1997 in Nature with the two details the popular retelling omits: the net transfer was in the single-digit percent range, and the western red cedar standing by as a control — an arbuscular partner not on the ectomycorrhizal network at all — still picked up 18% of the labelled carbon. Only then the four types with who has which (arbuscular ~72% of land plant species — all pome, stone and berry fruit, vegetables, grasses, palms and nearly every tropical crop tree including mango, avocado, citrus, coffee, cocoa, banana, coconut; ectomycorrhizal ~2% but the dominant forest trees — pine, spruce, larch, oak, beech, birch, hazel, sweet chestnut, pecan, eucalyptus, plus almost every edible forest mushroom; ericoid for blueberry, cranberry and rhododendron; arbutoid; monotropoid; orchid mycorrhiza; and the ~8% of species with none). Notes that walnut is arbuscular while its relative pecan is ectomycorrhizal, that willow and poplar carry both and can bridge the two systems, and that alder pairs ectomycorrhiza with Frankia nodules while sea buckthorn and oleaster pair Frankia with the arbuscular system. Explains which families have no fungal partner at all (brassicas, beets and chard, spinach, rhubarb, sorrel, buckwheat, most lupins) and the practical consequence: a mustard or fodder radish cover crop feeds no mycorrhizal fungi and lets their numbers fall. On the wood-wide web it gives the honest answer — a fungal mycelium is an individual with a boundary that does not fuse with its neighbours, so a forest is a patchwork of territories, not one network; transfer of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus within one territory is demonstrated, everything beyond that is contested. Also covers when inoculation is worth it and how edible mushrooms differ from it. German only for now.
- [About Taro](https://permaplans.com/taro/): The founder of Permaplans — Christoffer Montenero, permaculture designer, food gardener and teacher. Walked away from home with no money in 2011, learned permaculture on farms in New Zealand, lived and worked for years on two hectares with his own food forest, has taught courses since 2015 and published the Permaplay plant cards in 2018, from which the app's plant database grew. Also states the offer that non-profit projects — school gardens, community projects, associations, educational institutions — can ask for a plan they can afford. German only for now.

## Planting distances to the property boundary (German, Austrian and Swiss neighbour law)

How far a tree, shrub or hedge has to stay from the neighbouring property is set by state law in Germany (Nachbarrechtsgesetz), not federal law, and the numbers differ by state. Permaplans keeps one rule set and uses it in two places: the app warns while a plant is being placed, and every region has a free reference page.

- [Planting distances — overview](https://permaplans.com/grenzabstand/en/): Which state uses which rule, how the distance is measured (from the centre of the trunk at ground level to the boundary, horizontally), what counts as a hedge, and when a neighbour's claim expires (in most states five years after planting). German: [Grenzabstände](https://permaplans.com/grenzabstand/).
- One page per region, 23 in total, German and English: the 16 German states (`/grenzabstand/bayern/`, `/grenzabstand/nordrhein-westfalen/`, …), Austria, Switzerland, and the neighbouring countries Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Each page gives the required distance by plant height, the rules for hedges, the statute it comes from, and the limitation period.

The same numbers drive the app: while placing a plant, Permaplans knows the plant's mature height and the garden's boundary polygon and shows whether the position is legal before the tree is in the ground.

## Plans and pricing

- [Free](https://permaplans.com/pricing/en/): €0. One garden, up to 13 plants and notes, plant search and community access. No credit card, no time limit.
- [Starter](https://permaplans.com/starter/en/): €29 per year or €9 per quarter. Up to 2 gardens, unlimited plants and notes, unlimited professional plant search, basic PDF export, drone imagery overlay.
- [Premium](https://permaplans.com/premium/en/): €49 per year or €19 per quarter. Up to 5 gardens, advanced PDF and GeoJSON export, high-resolution photos.
- [Business](https://permaplans.com/business/en/): €199 per year or €99 per quarter. Unlimited gardens, full export set (PDF, GeoJSON, CSV, KMZ), customer and project management for professional planners.

Every paid plan is a subscription and can be cancelled at any time; each comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee. Buying runs through the app: sign in or create an account, pick a plan, pay via Stripe on desktop and in the browser, or via the App Store and Google Play on a phone. A one-time lifetime plan still exists on the German pages but is being phased out and is no longer offered to new customers by default.

## Platforms and data

- [Supported devices](https://permaplans.com/support/en/): iOS, iPadOS, macOS, Android, Windows and Linux. One account works across all devices with automatic sync.
- [Offline use](https://permaplans.com/support/en/): Plant database and existing garden plans are available offline; changes sync when a connection returns.
- [Data ownership and privacy](https://permaplans.com/privacy-policy/): Your garden data belongs to you, is private by default, and you decide what to publish. Data can be exported at any time, and accounts can be deleted on request.

## Who it is for

- Home and urban gardeners planning a productive garden rather than an ornamental one.
- Permaculture designers laying out zones, sectors and food-forest layers.
- Agroforestry and market-garden planners who need spacing, yield and multi-year projections.
- Landscape architects and garden professionals producing plans and exports for clients.
- Homesteaders and self-sufficiency growers who want to know how much of their food a plot can supply.
- Schools, community gardens and educational projects.

## Optional

- [News and release notes](https://permaplans.com/news/): Product updates and new-version announcements.
- [Changelog](https://permaplans.com/changelog/): Version-by-version list of changes.
- [Download](https://permaplans.com/download/): Direct downloads and store links for every platform.
- [Terms](https://permaplans.com/terms/): Terms of service.
- [Privacy policy](https://permaplans.com/privacy-policy/): How data is processed and stored.
- [Legal notice / Impressum](https://permaplans.com/impressum/): Provider, address, VAT ID and contact. English: https://permaplans.com/impressum/en/.
- [Delete your account](https://permaplans.com/delete_account/): Three steps in the app (Profile → Delete account) or one email from the registered address; lists exactly what is removed and what is legally retained. Guest accounts are deleted automatically after 30 days without use. English: https://permaplans.com/delete_account/en/.
- [Right of withdrawal](https://permaplans.com/widerrufsbelehrung/): Fourteen days to withdraw from any subscription taken out directly, plus a voluntary 14-day money-back promise on every paid plan. English: https://permaplans.com/widerrufsbelehrung/en/.
- [Sitemaps](https://permaplans.com/sitemap-index.xml): Index of all four sitemaps — static pages, plant pages, planting-distance pages, and the blog.

## Sortenseiten

Sorten (Kultivare) haben eigene Seiten unter /plants/<art-slug>/<sorten-slug>
(englisch /plants/en/<art-slug>/<sorten-slug>), z.B.
https://permaplans.com/plants/malus_domestica/schoner-aus-boskoop. Der
Sorten-Slug entsteht aus dem Sortennamen (Kleinbuchstaben, Akzente gefaltet,
ß → ss, Bindestriche). Jede Sortenseite nennt Geschmack, Reifezeit in
Monatsdritteln, Krankheitsresistenzen, Abstammung, Befruchtung, Verwendung und
Herkunft; Standortansprüche stehen auf der Artseite. Die Artseite listet alle
Sorten im Abschnitt „Sorten".

## App navigation & full feature list

- [All features](https://permaplans.com/features/en/): Complete, grouped list of every feature in the app (search, garden & map, analysis, vision, community, games, platforms). German version at https://permaplans.com/features/.
- [App navigation map](https://permaplans.com/llms-app.txt): Every screen and button of the app, where it sits and where it leads, with stable identifiers — use it to tell a user step by step where to tap. German version: https://permaplans.com/llms-app.de.txt.