Plantory vs Sprout It: Which Garden Planner Fits Europe?

If you are weighing Plantory against Sprout It, you are comparing two genuinely European-friendly garden planners that approach the same job from opposite ends. Sprout It is a curated, mobile-first kitchen-garden journal: pick the crops you want to grow, follow a hand-crafted plan, log progress. Plantory is an AI-first design tool: describe your space, let the model draw the layout, then care for it across the season. Both work in Europe. The right pick depends on whether you want a journal that guides you crop by crop, or a layout that solves the whole plot for you.

This comparison looks at both apps from a European gardener's point of view in 2026, focusing on the practical differences that actually decide the choice.

Quick Comparison

The Core Difference: A Layout vs a Journal

The fastest way to see these two apps clearly is to ask: what does day one look like?

Sprout It: A Hand-Curated Kitchen-Garden Journal

Sprout It was built around a thoughtful question — "I want to grow my own food but I want someone to tell me, week by week, what to actually do." You pick the crops that interest you, the app gives you a hand-written grow plan for each one, and the journal interface lets you log what you sowed, what germinated, what failed and what you ate. The tone is friendly, the writing is genuinely curated by gardeners rather than auto-generated, and the mobile app feels designed for the allotment, not the desk.

For a UK or Irish gardener with a small kitchen garden, that workflow is genuinely useful. It removes the "what do I do this week" problem and replaces it with a tappable to-do list. The community angle — sharing photos of your plot, following other growers — reinforces the journal-first identity.

The catch is what it deliberately does not do. Sprout It does not draw your garden. There is no spatial layout, no bed-by-bed plan, no "the tomatoes go here, the lettuce goes there in the shade of the courgettes". It is a curated calendar with a journal attached, not a design tool. It is also strongly anchored to the UK growing year, written in English, and focused on edibles rather than the whole garden.

Plantory: A Garden That Fits Your Actual Space

Plantory starts somewhere different. You describe your plot, upload a photo or sketch it out. You set the sun, soil and location. The AI then returns a full layout: where the beds go, what goes in each bed, where the paths run, which plants will support each other, where the shade-tolerant herbs sit, where the tall crops will not shadow the low ones. After the layout exists, Plantory then gives you the calendar and the care piece — sowing windows, transplant timing, watering, and, on the Gardener plan, AI photo diagnosis of pests and diseases.

The trade-off is that Plantory invests heavily in the layout part. If you genuinely just want a hand-curated weekly to-do list for the four crops you actually grow, with no interest in the spatial side, Sprout It is the lighter, more focused tool. If you want the layout solved for you in a way that uses your garden's hardiness zone and local weather and goes beyond the veg patch, Plantory does it.

Planning Approach: Spatial Design vs Journal-and-Reminders

This is the single most useful frame for choosing between them.

If you already know roughly what to plant and you just need help with the layout, Plantory does the layout for you. If you are happiest with a curated weekly checklist for your kitchen garden and you live somewhere with a UK-shaped growing year, Sprout It is the friendlier daily companion.

Climate Intelligence: Where European Gardeners Outside the UK Get Burned

Sprout It's strongest market is the UK and Ireland, and its sowing windows reflect that — the writing assumes a mild maritime climate with cool wet summers and a long shoulder season. For a British or Irish gardener, that is exactly right. For a gardener in continental central Europe, the Mediterranean or the Baltic, those windows quietly drift wrong by two to six weeks in either direction.

European gardening sits across genuinely different climates: Atlantic maritime (Cfb), continental central (Dfb), Mediterranean (Csa), Pannonian basin, Alpine valleys. The same calendar advice — "sow your courgettes outdoors now" — produces a healthy plant in Cork in late May and a frost-killed seedling in Brno or Krakow on the same day.

Plantory works from your garden's location: its hardiness zone and the local weather forecast. Frost alerts and, on the Gardener plan, sowing window alerts follow that location, so a gardener in Manchester, one in Prague and one in Valencia each get alerts for their own conditions. The plant encyclopedia can be filtered by hardiness zone, sun and water needs, so you see plants suited to where you live rather than only the UK-favoured ones.

For a gardener anywhere outside the British Isles, this is the single biggest practical difference.

Plant Database and Variety Coverage

Sprout It's plant list is a deliberately curated edibles catalogue — vegetables, herbs, soft fruit — with detailed hand-written growing notes per crop. The varieties named tend to be ones common in UK seed catalogues, which maps cleanly to British seed houses but less so to continental ones.

Plantory's encyclopedia covers 400,000+ species across vegetables, herbs, ornamentals, shrubs and trees. You can filter it by hardiness zone, sun and water needs. That broader coverage is also why Plantory can design an entire garden, not only the kitchen patch.

If your garden is purely a kitchen garden and you read English comfortably, Sprout It's tight, curated list is a feature, not a limitation. The narrower scope is part of why the writing stays high-quality. If you want the rest of the garden — the perennial border, the fruit tree, the herb pots, the climbing rose — Plantory has it.

Languages and Localisation

Sprout It is English only. For UK, Irish and English-fluent gardeners across northern Europe that is workable, but it becomes a real barrier elsewhere. Plant names, growing terms and seasonal references read very differently to a Polish, Czech, Spanish, Italian, French or German gardener planning in their own language.

Plantory is available in 8 languages: English, Czech, Slovak, German, Polish, Spanish, Italian and French. Tasks and frost alerts follow your garden's location, not the language you pick.

If your gardening household does not garden in English, this alone often decides the choice.

Disease and Pest Help

Sprout It includes pest and disease notes inside the curated crop pages. If you already know roughly what is wrong with your plant, you can find treatment guidance in the journal flow.

Plantory's Gardener plan adds a different layer on top: photo-based AI diagnosis. You take a picture of the chewed leaf, the brown spot, the wilting stem, and the app suggests the most likely cause and an action plan. It is not perfect — no photo diagnosis is — but it converts the hardest part of fixing a problem (correctly identifying it in the first place) into a quick task instead of an evening of searching forums.

For a beginner facing an unfamiliar pest, the AI diagnosis is the bigger time-saver. For an experienced kitchen gardener who already recognises the usual culprits, Sprout It's reference notes may be enough.

Pricing and Value

Both apps offer a free tier and an optional paid upgrade. Sprout It runs a freemium model with a paid premium tier that unlocks deeper grow plans and additional features; pricing is in GBP and shifts over time, so check the current rate on their site before committing.

Plantory offers a permanent free tier with 3 gardens, 25 plants per garden, weekly tasks, frost alerts and 1 AI visualization a month. The paid Gardener plan costs €7 per month or €39 per year and adds unlimited gardens and AI visualizations, full weather alerts and disease diagnosis. EUR pricing matters for continental European households who would otherwise be billed in GBP or USD with exchange-rate noise.

Who Should Use Sprout It?

Sprout It is a sensible choice if:

• You are growing a kitchen garden — vegetables, herbs, soft fruit — and you want a curated, hand-written grow plan rather than an algorithm.
• You live in the UK or Ireland, or your climate looks broadly UK-shaped (mild maritime).
• You read and garden in English.
• You like a mobile-first journal workflow: log sowings, photograph progress, tick off weekly tasks.
• You only want an edible-garden planner, not a whole-garden designer.

It is friendly, curated, well-written and good at its core promise.

Who Should Use Plantory?

Plantory is the better fit if:

• You garden somewhere in Europe and want a tool that works from your garden's hardiness zone and local weather forecast, not a UK calendar.
• You want a complete garden, not only a vegetable patch — including ornamentals, shrubs and trees.
• You want the layout solved for you, fast, before you commit to a season.
• You would rather not garden in English: Czech, Slovak, German, Polish, Spanish, Italian or French.
• You want AI photo diagnosis of pest and disease problems (Gardener plan), not only a reference library.
• You want a permanent free tier so you can try the planning workflow before paying anything.

Plantory's European climate zones guide and the companion planting guide explain exactly how the layout decisions are made, if you want to look under the hood before signing up.

The Verdict

Sprout It is a beautifully curated kitchen-garden journal for English-speaking edible gardeners who want a hand-written grow plan and a mobile diary. If that describes you and your climate is broadly UK-shaped, it will do its job well.

Plantory is the broader tool: a layout-first, climate-aware, multilingual garden planner that covers the whole European garden, not only the veg bed. For most European gardeners outside the British Isles, the deciding factors are the hardiness-zone and local-weather data, the native language support, and the AI layout — three areas where Sprout It is not designed to compete because they sit outside its target audience.

If you are honestly on the fence, the easiest test is to try the free tier. Generate one design for your actual space, look at the layout, then ask whether a curated weekly checklist alone would have given you that result.