The online landscape design service acquired by Bower & Branch in 2024, now sold as Design Studio with the plants for sale alongside the plan.
Real redesign: Zen backyard. Drag to compare.
Price
$19
per month, 250 designs
Turnaround
Under 2 minutes
Unlimited re-rolls on every plan
Best at
Unlimited iterations on your own photo, before you spend a peso on plants
What Tilly is today: Bower & Branch Design Studio.
Price
$559–$1,259
one-time, priced by area
Turnaround
2–4 weeks
Per design round
Best at
A regional plant selection from a company that actually grows and ships the plants
The short answer
Bower & Branch Design Studio, the service formerly sold as Tilly, wins if you want a human-designed plan and would rather buy the plants in the same place you got the plan. AI Garden Design wins if you are still deciding what you want, because $559 is a lot to spend on a direction you have not tested.
Tilly was one of the main Yardzen alternatives: human designers, fixed-price packages, a turnaround in weeks. It no longer exists on its own. Bower & Branch, an online marketplace where independent growers sell trees and plants direct to homeowners, acquired Tilly in August 2024 and folded the design team into its own Design Studio. tillydesign.com now redirects there, and the packages are priced under the Bower & Branch name.
You pick a package by area, submit photos and a brief, and a US-based designer produces custom 2D and 3D plans with plant selections chosen for your region, plus hardscape and lighting suggestions. Bower & Branch states the designs are never outsourced. The difference from the old Tilly is what happens after: the plan lands inside a marketplace that sells the trees and plants specified in it.
Where the money goes
If you are comparing Tilly against anything, start here: Bower & Branch acquired it in August 2024 and folded the design team into its own Design Studio. tillydesign.com redirects there and tilly.design no longer resolves. The design service survived. The company you were comparing did not.
That matters beyond the name on the invoice. Bower & Branch is a marketplace where independent growers sell trees and plants direct to homeowners. So the design is no longer the product, it is the front end of a plant business. You get a plan with a regional selection, and then you can buy the specified plants from the people who grew them.
It closes a gap that every other online design service leaves wide open. Yardzen hands you a plant list and wishes you luck at the nursery, where half of it turns out to be unavailable or the wrong size. Here the list and the stock are the same company. That is a real advantage and it is worth more than the price difference.
It also cuts the other way. A designer working inside a business that sells plants has an obvious reason to specify plants, and the packages are priced by area rather than by ambition, so the design is the cheap part and the planting is where the money goes. Read the plan as a shopping list and decide separately whether you want that much of it.
The pricing did get better. The old Tilly ran roughly $649 for a small area up to $1,899 for a full yard. Design Studio does a full yard for $1,049, which undercuts Yardzen's cheapest tier with a photoreal render by a comfortable margin.
$559
Front Yard. Custom 2D and 3D plans with regional plant selection, hardscape and lighting suggestions.
$699
Backyard. Same deliverable on the bigger, usually more complicated half of the property.
$1,049
Full Yard. Front and back together, and cheaper than buying the two separately.
$699 to $1,259
Native & Beneficial. The same three areas designed around regional natives and pollinator planting, roughly $140 to $210 more per package.
The order that saves money has not changed with the ownership: work out what you want on your own photo first, then buy the package to have someone make it real and source the plants. Arriving at a $559 package still undecided is how you spend it on discovery instead of on design.
Every row is a real difference, not a checkbox. Where Tilly Design is genuinely stronger, the table says so.
| Feature | AI Garden Design | Tilly Design |
|---|---|---|
| Format | Photorealistic AI redesign of your actual photo | Custom 2D and 3D plans with a regional plant selection, from a human designer |
| Pricing | $19/month yearly ($228/yr) for 250 designs on Personal, $69/month yearly ($828/yr) for 1,000 designs and commercial license on Pro | $559 front yard, $699 backyard, $1,049 full yard; native-planting versions $699 to $1,259 |
| Turnaround | Under two minutes per redesign, unlimited iterations on every plan | Two to four weeks from brief to finished design |
| Iterations | Unlimited, try every style, every space, every variation | Worked through with your designer inside the package |
| Plant list | Suggested plant guide per style | Regional selection, and the marketplace sells the plants it specifies |
| Hardscape and lighting | Rendered in the image, not specified | Suggestions included in every package |
| Buying the plants | Not included | The whole point: growers ship the specified trees and plants direct |
| Entry price | $19/mo yearly, cancel anytime | $559 before any design work starts |
Not renders of someone else's garden. Drag the handle to see the original photo turn into the redesign.
Upload a photo and get a photorealistic redesign in under two minutes. Try as many styles as you like before deciding whether Tilly Design is worth it.
Redesign my gardenBower & Branch acquired Tilly in August 2024 and integrated the design team into its own service, launched as Bower & Branch Design Studio. tillydesign.com now redirects to that page and tilly.design no longer resolves. The design service continues, the brand does not.
Design Studio packages are priced by area: $559 for a front yard, $699 for a backyard and $1,049 for a full yard. The Native & Beneficial versions, focused on regional natives and pollinator planting, run $699, $839 and $1,259.
Yes, and by a wider margin than Tilly used to be. A full yard at $1,049 sits below Yardzen's $1,395 Classic, the cheapest Yardzen tier that includes a photorealistic render, and a front yard at $559 is well under Yardzen's $995 entry package.
For seeing what your yard could look like, yes, and far more cheaply. For a plan with regional plant selection, hardscape and lighting called out, and a way to actually buy the plants, no. Those are different products and the sensible order is to use one before the other.
It is the cheapest insurance available. Turning up with three renders of your own yard and a clear preference means the designer spends the package working on execution rather than on discovering your taste.
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If you want the full list of options rather than a head-to-head, the alternatives page covers every tool and service in this category.
All alternatives to Tilly Design →