Two New Zealand-made tools for New Zealand gardeners. Gardenate is a trusted planting calendar. Planting Season is a full garden planner. Here is how they compare.
| Feature | Planting Season | Gardenate |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free tier, $44.95 NZD/yr, or $129 NZD lifetime | Free |
| New Zealand planting data | Yes (8 climate regions) | Yes (regional calendars) |
| Bed planner | Yes (drag-and-drop layout tool) | No |
| Companion planting | Yes (warnings built into bed planner) | No |
| Works offline | Yes (full PWA) | Yes, native iOS and Android apps |
| Variety guides | Yes (New Zealand-suited varieties) | 90+ crops, add your own plants |
| Watering reminders | Yes | No |
| Seed inventory | Yes | Yes, wish list and seed packet scanner |
Gardenate deserves credit. It has been helping New Zealand gardeners work out what to plant and when for a long time, and it does that job well. Its regional planting calendars are a reliable starting point for anyone getting into vegetable gardening in New Zealand.
Planting Season was built to go further. Think of it as Gardenate plus a garden planner in one app.
Gardenate is a planting calendar reference. You look up your region, see what to plant this month, and get a list. That is useful, but it stops there. Planting Season includes regional planting calendars for 8 New Zealand climate zones and adds a drag-and-drop bed planner on top. You can lay out your actual garden, assign plants to beds, and see companion planting warnings as you go.
When you place plants in the Planting Season bed planner, the app checks for companion planting conflicts and synergies. Put basil next to your tomatoes and you will see the positive pairing. Drop fennel nearby and you will get a warning. Gardenate does not include companion planting data.
Gardenate has native apps for iOS and Android that hold their data on the phone, so it works offline too. Planting Season installs as a progressive web app and does the same. The difference is what you can do while you are out there: with Planting Season you can update your bed layout, log a harvest, check a pruning window and review your seed store, not just look up planting times.
Planting Season includes New Zealand variety recommendations so you know which cultivars actually grow well in your region, along with watering reminders. Gardenate tracks seeds too, with a wish list and a seed packet scanner, so the difference here is depth rather than presence.
If all you need is a quick monthly reference for what to plant, Gardenate does the job and it is free. It has been a trusted resource for New Zealand gardeners for years.
What it does not do is plan your physical garden space, warn you about companion conflicts as you lay a bed out, or look after anything beyond the vegetable patch. If you want to go past looking up a calendar and start designing and managing the whole place, fruit trees and animals included, Planting Season picks up where Gardenate leaves off.
Gardenate has been available for many years and continues to provide planting calendar data. However, it has not received major feature updates recently. It functions primarily as a reference calendar rather than an actively evolving garden planning tool.
Yes. Some gardeners use Gardenate as a familiar quick reference and Planting Season for bed planning and companion planting. That said, Planting Season includes its own regional planting calendars for 8 New Zealand climate zones, so you may find everything you need in one place.
Planting Season has its own independently built planting database covering 8 New Zealand climate regions. The data was not sourced from Gardenate. Both tools cover similar ground in terms of when to plant, but Planting Season also includes variety recommendations, companion planting data, and region-specific growing tips.
Planting Season adds a drag-and-drop garden bed planner, companion planting warnings built into the layout tool, a seed inventory tracker, watering reminders, New Zealand variety guides, and full offline mode. Gardenate focuses on being a planting calendar reference and does not offer garden layout planning or offline access.
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