Yearscapes

I bought a house with a backyard that was just dirt. Zero plants. Zero plan. So I did what any reasonable person does: drove to the nursery, wandered around, and bought whatever looked good that day. I did this for two years straight.

The yard was a mess. Not "needs some tweaks" messy. Genuinely, embarrassingly random. Too tall here, too small there, one plant that lasted a single winter and one that decided to take over the entire bed. Nothing talked to anything else because nothing was ever chosen together.

Somewhere in there I finally learned the thing nobody tells you when you buy a house: landscapes that look incredible aren't the ones with the fanciest plants. They're the ones with a plan. A few good plants, repeated on purpose, everywhere. That's it. That's the whole trick, and it's nearly impossible to stumble into by buying one thing at a time on a whim, no matter how good your taste is.

I also didn't want to swing the other way and drop a landscaper-sized budget on a finished yard overnight. Most people can't, and a garden shouldn't show up all at once anyway, it's supposed to grow into itself. So the actual answer turned out to be smaller than I expected: plan the whole thing once, then build it in over a few years, starting with the foundation plants. And buy from online nurseries instead of big-box stores, because their stock ships with real root systems and just plain grows better. That's also the easiest way to buy 12 coral bells and 8 boxwoods all at once instead of trying to remember the right variety eight separate times across three nursery visits.

That's Yearscapes. Plan it once. Buy into it a little at a time.

Why it's free

Play needs zero friction, so there's no paywall between you and your plan. Build it, tinker with it, take your time.

The plan is to make money once you're happy enough with your plan to actually go buy the plants. Every nursery I partner with will be tied to a code with my name on it: you get a discount, the nursery gets a sale, and I get a small referral fee, all without costing you or them anything extra. That part isn't live yet (see Pricing for exactly what's real today), but it's the actual plan for how this stays free without ads or selling your data.

Want to buy somewhere else instead? Go for it. Eventually there'll be a buy-me-a-coffee button for anyone who wants to chip in, but that'll always be optional.

Mostly, though, I'm just here to promote good landscaping and have fun building something that's genuinely useful to me and my own bare, confused backyard.

Who's doing this

Me. Just me. I have a design background, a BFA in graphic design, and a career spent bouncing around product design, product management, and engineering. I am not a professional landscaper and I am still, two years later, occasionally putting the wrong plant in the wrong spot. I'm learning in public.

This is solo-built, mostly using AI tools to cover the ground one person normally can't. I have a full-time job and a family, so this happens in the leftover hours, which mostly means it replaced Netflix, not that it added a second job.

No team. No investors. No roadmap meetings. Just me using the thing I built, noticing what's broken, and fixing it, because I'm the one who'll trip over it first. If you spot something off, tell me: Contact.