NGP Basics: Add a Simple Shape

Learn how to add simple shapes to your garden design in Native Garden Planner! In this quick tutorial, we'll cover using rectangles, circles, and other basic shapes to create patios, mulch beds, lawns, ponds, and other landscape elements.

This video is part of the NGP Basics series — a step-by-step playlist that covers everything you need to know to design your first native garden, from creating a project to choosing plants and exporting your finished design.

In this video you'll learn:

• How to add simple shapes to your canvas
• How to resize, move, and rotate shapes
• How to customize colors and appearance
• How to use shapes for landscape features and hardscapes
• Tips for organizing your design with simple shapes

Transcript

[0:01] Welcome to part four of designing a simple garden. So far we've covered creating the garden, interacting with the catalog, and adding custom plants. Now we're moving on to adding other elements to your design — specifically shapes.

Right now our project is set up as a single garden bed, so the entire canvas represents that one bed. If you want to expand the design to include multiple beds, a lawn, a patio, or other features, you'd first resize the project space to represent the full area — say, 10×10 — and change the background surface from soil to grass to reflect that this is now a yard rather than just a single bed.

[0:47] To add a shape, click the plus button in the control panel. Let's start simple — a rectangle. When you select a shape, a placement toolbar appears at the top of the canvas showing the default dimensions (e.g. 6×4). You can type in your own dimensions there — say 10×2 — and hit Enter to place it at that exact size without having to click and drag.

[1:10] Once the shape is placed and selected, a toolbar appears with several options. The most important one here is Send to Back (not "Send Backward," which only moves it behind one layer at a time). Use Send to Back to push the shape behind all your plants so it sits properly as a background element.

With the shape selected, the sidebar shows a details panel where you can:

• Rename the shape (e.g. "Back Garden Bed")
• Edit points or resize with exact dimensions
• Rotate the shape
• Change the border — color and thickness
• Change the fill — choose from built-in surface patterns like soil, grass, wood chips, concrete, water, brick, and more. You can also upload a custom image to use as the fill pattern, and adjust its scale and opacity.

I'll set this rectangle's fill to soil to represent a garden bed.

[2:24] Let's add another shape — a teardrop this time, to use as a pond. You can set the border and fill before you draw it: I'll set both to the water pattern, then click and drag on the canvas to size it.

By default, shapes snap to the grid in 1-foot increments as you drag. To get sub-foot precision — say, 2.5×3.9 instead of 3×4 — hold Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) while dragging. That disables snapping and gives you smooth, free positioning.

Once placed, the same details panel opens in the sidebar. I'll rename this one "Pond" and leave the rest as-is.

[4:14] That covers adding simple shapes — set your dimensions, pick a surface, place it, and use Send to Back to layer it correctly behind your plants. Freeform shapes with curves and custom polygon points are coming up in the next video, since that's a topic that deserves its own walkthrough.