Plant Spacing Calculator

What does this tool calculate?

Enter your garden bed's length and width, plus the recommended spacing for whatever you're planting, and this tool works out how many plants fit — laid out two different ways. Square grid places plants on evenly spaced rows and columns. Triangular (staggered) spacing offsets every other row by half the spacing, which packs rows closer together. The tool shows both counts side by side so you can see which layout gets more out of your bed.

How the two layouts work

A square grid is the simplest way to lay out a bed: plants sit at every intersection of a grid spacing apart in both directions. It's easy to mark out with string and stakes, but it leaves diamond-shaped gaps of unused soil between plants.

Triangular spacing (also called staggered or hexagonal spacing) closes those gaps by shifting alternating rows sideways by half a spacing unit, and moving the rows themselves closer together — spacing × sin(60°) (about 0.866 × spacing) apart instead of a full spacing. Every plant still keeps its full recommended distance from its neighbors; it's just that the neighbors on the diagonal are now closer than they'd be on a square grid, so more of them fit.

On a large bed this typically fits 10–15% more plants than a square grid at the same spacing. On a small bed, though, triangular spacing can come out even or lower than square — the offset rows lose a plant at the edge, and that edge loss matters proportionally more when there are only a few rows to begin with. The calculator reports the real numbers for your bed rather than assuming triangular always wins.

How to use it

1. Enter your bed's length and width.
2. Enter the plant spacing — the minimum recommended distance between plants for whatever you're growing (check a seed packet or growing guide).
3. Pick a unit (centimeters, inches, feet, or meters) — length, width, and spacing should all be read in that same unit.
4. Read the bed area and the plant count for each layout, plus the difference between them.

Frequently asked questions

Which layout should I actually plant? Triangular spacing generally gets more plants into the same bed and is common practice for closely spaced crops (lettuce, carrots, onions). A square grid is simpler to mark out and easier to hoe/weed in straight lines — worth it for wider-spaced crops where the difference in count is small.

Where does the recommended spacing number come from? It's whatever your seed packet, plant tag, or growing guide recommends for that specific vegetable, herb, or flower — this tool doesn't include a plant database, so bring your own spacing figure.

Does this account for pathways or bed borders? No — enter the usable planting area (inside any border or walking path) as your length and width, not the bed's outer footprint.

My bed isn't rectangular — what do I do? Approximate it as the closest rectangle, or split it into rectangular sections and run the calculator once per section.

Privacy

All calculations run locally in your browser. No garden dimensions or spacing values are sent anywhere.