NiwaNiwa press kit
Everything needed to write about Niwa: the facts, the pricing, full-resolution screenshots and the app icon. If something is missing, email me and I will send it the same day.
Fact sheet
| App name | Garden Planner: Niwa |
|---|---|
| What it is | A garden planner for iPhone that works entirely offline. It lays out vegetable beds on a square-foot grid, generates planting dates from the gardener's own frost dates, and records what grew in every square. |
| Price | Free to download. Premium costs $19.99 per year or $34.99 once for lifetime access. Planning a garden does not require a purchase. |
| Platform | iPhone. Requires iOS 18.0 or later. There is no iPad or Android version. |
| Size | 138.6 MB |
| Release date | 20 February 2026. Current version 1.4.2, released 18 August 2026. |
| Developer | Gabriele Pala, independent developer |
| Rating | 4.8 out of 5 on the App Store, from 13 ratings |
| Category | Lifestyle (primary), Reference (secondary) |
| Age rating | 4+ |
| Languages | English |
| Privacy | No analytics, no advertising, no tracking and no account. All data stays on the device. |
| App Store | apps.apple.com/us/app/garden-planner-niwa/id6759283849 |
| Website | tryniwa.com |
| Press kit | tryniwa.com/press |
About Niwa
Niwa is a garden planner for iPhone that works entirely offline, laying out vegetable beds on a square-foot grid and generating planting dates from the gardener's own frost dates.
One paragraph. Niwa is a garden planner for iPhone, aimed at people growing vegetables in raised beds or small backyard plots. It draws a bed to scale on a square-foot grid, applies the correct plant spacing automatically, turns the user's USDA grow zone and frost dates into sow and harvest windows for more than 200 plants, and remembers which plant family occupied each square in previous seasons. Unlike the web-based planners it competes with, Niwa is a native iOS app that works with no internet connection, requires no account, and contains no analytics or advertising. It is free to download, with a Premium tier at $19.99 per year or $34.99 for lifetime access.
The full story
Garden planning tools are almost all websites. The Old Farmer's Almanac planner, GrowVeg and VegPlotter all run in a browser, store the plan on a server and require a login. That works at a desk, and it stops working at the moment the tool is most useful: standing over a bed, deciding whether the gap next to the broccoli takes lettuce or beans, fifty metres from the nearest router or on an allotment with one bar of signal.
Niwa was built the other way round. The entire plant library ships inside the app, which is why the download is 138 MB. Layouts, the planting calendar, the diary and the seed inventory are all stored on the device. There is no account to create, nothing to sync and no server holding a copy of anyone's garden. That also means there is no analytics SDK and no advertising, which is a design decision rather than a feature held back for a paid tier.
The planning itself is built around four calculations that gardeners usually get wrong on paper. Spacing is the first: Niwa applies square-foot densities of one, four, nine or sixteen plants automatically as a crop is dropped onto the grid, drawing on a plant record that runs to eight reference sections covering seeding, characteristics, growing requirements, advanced growing, transplanting, harvest, storage and nutrition. Timing is the second: the app converts a location into a grow zone and a pair of frost dates, then produces a personal sow, transplant and harvest window for every plant in the library. Companion and combative pairings are the third, flagged on the grid at the moment a conflicting plant is placed rather than buried in a chart.
The fourth is crop rotation, added in version 1.4.2, and it is the part no chart on a shed wall can do. Every square records which plant family grew in it and in which year. When a family is placed back too soon, Niwa names the family, the year it last grew there and the year the ground is clear again. It knows the taxonomy that trips people up, including that radishes are brassicas and that alliums need the longest gap of any crop, because allium white rot survives in soil as sclerotia for a decade or more.
Key features
- Niwa draws a vegetable bed to scale on a square-foot grid and applies the correct plant spacing automatically, at one, four, nine or sixteen plants per square.
- The app converts a location into a USDA grow zone and frost dates, then generates personal sow, transplant and harvest windows for more than 200 plants.
- Every square records which plant family grew in it and in which year, and Niwa warns the gardener before a family returns to the same soil too soon.
- Companion and combative pairings are flagged directly on the bed layout as each plant is placed, rather than left in a reference chart.
- The plant library covers more than 200 vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers, grains and trees, and every entry is organised into eight reference sections: seeding and cultivation, plant characteristics, growing requirements, advanced growing, transplant information, harvest information, storage information and nutritional value.
- A plant diary stores timestamped notes and photographs against individual plants, and a seed inventory tracks packets, quantities and expiry dates.
- Niwa works with no internet connection, requires no account, and contains no tracking, analytics or advertising.
Screenshots
Nine screenshots, 2340 by 4456 pixels, PNG with a transparent background. Each one is the app shown in an iPhone device frame, with no marketing overlay or promotional text, and all of them show realistic garden data. Click any image for the full-resolution file.
App icon
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niwa-press-kit.zip9 screenshots, 3 icon sizes and the fact sheet as a text file. 10 MB.
Download the press kitAll assets on this page may be used in editorial coverage of Niwa without asking permission first. No attribution beyond the app name is required. If you need a screenshot of something not shown here, a different device size, a short screen recording, or a promo code, email me and I will send it the same day.
About the developer
Gabriele Pala is an independent developer who has been building and shipping apps since 2019. Niwa comes out of a long-running personal obsession with vegetables, trees and growing things, which is the reason the plant library runs to more than 200 species and why the crop rotation model bothers to distinguish plant families rather than crops.
Niwa is a solo project. Design, development, the plant data and the in-app guides are all their own work.
What users say
Niwa has not been covered by the press yet. The quotes below are App Store reviews, reproduced as written.
“A very solid home garden planner that provides a lot of features which seem to be missing from other similar apps. The plant information section and planting calendar alone are worth the download.”
AnotherAndTryYetAgain, App Store, 5 stars
“Extremely pleased with this gardening planning app. This app is well thought out, well designed, and spam free. It is perfect for using the square foot gardening method because it draws the grids. I especially love how it recognizes companion plants and USDA zones.”
Livi, App Store, 5 stars
“I found this app through Reddit and even though it's in its early stages, it has a ton to offer. I'm a professional gardener and this is very similar to how I layout gardens using square footage. The developer is very open to suggestions and I've passed on a few, and they have been very receptive.”
AtomAngel, App Store, 5 stars
Contact
Gabriele Pala, developer of Niwa.
Email: niwa.plant@gmail.com
Website: tryniwa.com
App Store: Garden Planner: Niwa
Email is the fastest way to reach me. Review requests, promo codes, interviews and questions about how any part of the app works are all welcome.