Designing your own garden is half the fun, whether you do it all at once or a bit at a time. But you don't have to do it alone: help, advice and good ideas are as close as your smartphone, where you can find garden design apps and other online gardening tools.

Garden designers often use sophisticated software to design and present their ideas. The computer-assisted design programs they rely on are made for professionals, and they're tricky to master -- and frustrating, especially if you're just going to be a one-time user. Apps and online tools, on the other hand, have been developed to help you work comfortably with the fundamentals of design so you can transform your property into a garden you can be proud of.

"You're not ready to pick up a shovel until you have a plan," says Jennifer Silver, communications manager for Julie Moir Messervy Design Studio in Vermont. Four years ago, Messervy's six-person garden-design firm introduced a design app called Palette, now renamed Home Outside (which is the also the title of one of Messervy's most popular books). The app, which is free, puts professional design tools in your hands, but you don't have to be a pro to use them.

Home Outside enables you to make an overall garden plan for your property. Even if you're only thinking of installing a patio in the backyard, drawing up a master plan is a good idea, Silver says. It helps establish flow, so the whole garden -- from the curb to the back fence -- will be more graceful, coherent and accommodating. A full-garden plan also helps you avoid expensive mistakes, she says, because it forces you to look at each part of your yard and think about the way the spaces work and feel and relate to one another.

With Home Outside, users can simply import a Google Earth image of their property, which neatly solves the challenge of measuring and mapping existing features. This image is the essential first layer of the landscape design. From there, the app guides you through the process of adding more layers or overlays -- paths, walls, flower beds, water features and plants. You can even add labels and notes, make a list of materials or sources, or jot down the names of specific plants you're interested in. If you decide you need professional advice (for a fee, of course), you can use the app to contact and collaborate with garden designers in Messervy's office.

Free is hard to beat. Another design app, Garden Planner, which costs $34 (though a free 15-day trial is available), lets you sketch the layout of your property and drag icons representing walls, paths, trees, shrubs and flowers around the space and reshape them. Putting a plan together like this feels like playing, which encourages experimentation.

HGTV also offers landscape design software ($80) that includes a Deck Wizard feature to help gardeners design decks and patios. You start with a plan view or by importing digital images of your property, then use a simple drag-and-drop process to add paths, fences, flower beds and other features. The software allows your design to be viewed both as a plan and as if you were standing looking at the garden (in elevation). It shows how the landscape changes through the seasons and even projects how trees and shrubs will grow from garden-shop size to maturity. A built-in plant encyclopedia will help you choose the best plants for your climate. For first-time designers, the options may appear almost overwhelming.

Garden design is a complex process, and it really starts with taking stock of your property, making lists of priorities and possibilities, and trying to imagine a garden where there is nothing at present. Designer-based apps and software help you do all these things and keep you from going down a lot of dead ends.

It will be helpful to listen to the thoughts and comments of experienced designers, which you can do from any spot with a Wi-Fi connection. YouTube, the champion of do-it-yourself projects, is a great source of short garden design videos. Houzz, an online design resource, presents hundreds of thousands of garden images -- a deep well of ideas -- with links to designer websites where you can find videos, workbooks, galleries of projects and, in general, lots of inspiration.

Looking at pictures, watching videos and moving garden features around on a template on the screen of your phone, computer or tablet may not seem like hands-in-the-dirt gardening, but the point of a design is that you're interested in the overall effect, not just the beauty of individual flowers scattered around your yard. It's hard to design a good garden until you explore the territory. Dig in online first, and you'll be sowing the seeds for a successful garden plan.

SOURCES / SCREEN TIME

-- Home Outside is the garden design app developed by Julie Moir Messervy Design Studio (jmmds.com). The app and all its tools are free. In addition to garden design, the app also has an "events" palette to help users plan garden weddings and outdoor parties. You'll need some practice to take advantage of all the features of this professional app.

-- With the Garden Planner app ($34), you can create a template for your property and add trees, shrubs, flower beds, paths and patios, among many other features. The app's intuitive design is easy to use.

-- HGTV Ultimate Home Design with Landscaping and Decks software ($80; homedesignsoftware.tv) lets you upload an image of your home, then design landscaping around it. An encyclopedia with more than 7,500 plants is included.

-- Check houzz.com and YouTube for garden ideas and resources.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)

Put football and flowers together, and what you get is "sporticulture" -- a new twist on gardening that pairs team-spirited pots with mums, pansies and other colorful blooms perfect for the season.

Sporticulture is the brainchild of Cortland Smith, an unabashed Washington Redskins fan who walked into a greenhouse full of red and yellow pansies and saw more than beautiful flowers -- he saw his team in living color. Smith and his business partner, Pete Gilmore, took their concept to the NFL, which recognized a niche market and granted the necessary licensing. The two business partners have been running with it ever since.

"It's not as much about gardening as it is about decorating," Gilmore says, emphasizing the idea of pretty grab-and-go plants in pots that, with little fuss, turn a front porch or patio into a welcoming party venue. The game-day decorators who have picked up on the idea are mostly women, he says, but the appeal is growing. "We are hoping men, millennials, all kinds of people look at this and say, 'Oh, that's my team -- that's cool,' and take it to a friend's house," Gilmore says.

Sporticulture made a quiet launch of its products in 2015. This year is the big kickoff: Fans across the country can find their favorites at garden shops and big-box stores. You can buy mums in Green Bay Packers gold in an NFL-themed pot, or fire-engine red mums in a two-gallon container sporting the arrowhead logo of the Kansas City Chiefs. These products "bring team colors to life," as the Sporticulture website says. Just so fans don't miss the message, big plant labels amid the blooms look like football helmets.

The promotion gives growers and garden shops that are already marketing long-lasting fall mums and cold-tolerant pansies a new way to expand their fall offerings, says Gilmore, who has been in the horticulture business for 40 years. Sporticulture sells the pots and makes recommendations for plants, but garden shops are free to interpret the color schemes with plants appropriate for their own regions, he says. In Florida, one shop packed pots with colorful crotons, which just happen to echo the orange accent of the Miami Dolphins' colors.

"We want growers to be creative" in matching one or more team colors with the pots, Gilmore says. He has seen pots packed with short-stemmed sunflowers and black-eyed Susans, and he looks forward to seeing ever more imaginative combinations as the concept catches on.

Sports fans can show their colors without NFL-licensed pots, of course. A tailgate party might sprout an array of small pots of team-themed flowers on a line of scrimmage across a tabletop. A Baltimore Ravens fan could plant purple asters and shimmering goldenrod around the patio for a flash of glory in the fall. If you're a Pittsburgh Steeler at heart, your team's colors are black and gold, so mums, black-eyed Susans, heleniums and gloriosa daisies would all be appropriate golden-hued choices for a flower bed near the front door -- with yellow, orange and blue accents echoing the Steelers logo.

If you're in doubt about matching colors, you could take your cues from the Glidden paint company, which offers a series of official team-spirit color combinations for NFL fans, as well as for baseball, soccer, hockey, NASCAR and men's and women's NBA teams. You can find them at The Home Depot. While you're picking up a gallon of silver paint for the Dallas Cowboys-themed rec room, tuck a few other paint chips in your pocket, and you'll be able to color-check flowers in the garden shop on your way out. Remember that, just like paint chips, flower (and foliage) colors tend to look different depending on the source of light. On a sunny fall day, even bright hues might look a little washed out. Flower colors also vary in intensity over the course of their blooming period. You can keep the colors fresh by pinching off blooms as they fade -- and by reminding yourself that it's just for fun. Don't worry about whether your Minnesota Vikings-themed purple, gold and white plant combos exactly match everybody's game-day jerseys.

Sporticulture, the company, sees a lot of potential at the intersection of horticulture and sports. Their product lineup includes giant plastic lawn bags that look like team helmets when they're stuffed full of leaves. They're also selling LED lights that project your team's logo onto the garage door. You can even buy a retractable hose decorated with the snazzy logos of NFL teams. The company was recognized with two industry awards for innovation and new products. It may sound like another crazy sports concept, but putting gardening on the gridiron is a first down for flowers. Go for it.

Sources

Game On

-- Sporticulture pots full of blooms are available in independent garden shops and in big-box stores. For availability, check the Sporticulture Facebook page or email info@sporticulture.com. For other Sporticulture products, see amazon.com or fanfesto.com. For more information, see sporticulture.com.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)

You'll find lots of advice these days about putting your garden to bed in the fall, but this is a season of life and color. Don't let your garden sleep through it!

Great gardens, in fact, practically never sleep. If you choose plants carefully, design for year-round interest and use your imagination, your garden will be as pretty in the year's waning months -- or in the snow -- as it is in high summer.

After summer's heat, it's pleasant to be able to get outdoors a little more, but there's no pressure to try to accomplish everything at once. The fall is a time for puttering. If you've planned ahead, the asters are blooming now, ornamental grasses flaunt their feathery flower heads, a few choice shrubs are displaying ripe berries, and roses, revived by cooler temperatures, produce blooms of the most intense color and fragrance of the year. The days are growing shorter, and on a crisp fall day, time seems richer than ever as you plant solid, crinkly-skinned tulip and daffodil bulbs by the dozens.

Fall is also a good time to do a little bit of pruning, cutting back shrubs that encroach on paths or block views. You can save the hard work of renovating overgrown plants until spring. In the fall, just make selective cuts to enhance the appearance of deciduous shrubs and tidy up the growth habits of evergreens. Too much cutting can stimulate growth here at the wrong season for it, so step back from your snipping after a just a few minutes. Now is mainly a time to admire and enjoy your garden.

Fall is the traditional season of chrysanthemums, and garden shops are well stocked with their brilliant inspiration. Mums' blazing orange, yellow and deep russet flowers echo the colors of autumn leaves and last for weeks in flower beds or in pots on the porch. Alongside the mums, make room for brightly colored pansies, which flourish in cool fall temperatures and even bloom through winter where temperatures are mild. Tiny violas are sturdier than pansies, and perhaps even more charming. They're especially pretty up close, so plant them along paths or in pots where you can admire them as you come and go.

Look beyond these classics at your local garden shop, and you're likely to find dianthus, snapdragons, calendulas and lots of fall grasses ready to pop into pots. Marigolds aren't just summer blooms; they are some of the best fall flowers for their rich colors, pleasingly neat habit and long-lasting blooms.

Vegetable gardeners may lament the season's last tomatoes, but there is actually a lot to look forward to in the fall: This is the season of beautiful, healthy greens. Many garden shops sell transplants in the fall, for an almost-instant vegetable garden. Kale, Swiss chard and radicchio, known for their natural cold tolerance, taste better after a light frost. Salad greens planted now will provide lettuce for a month or more, especially if you cover the plants on cold nights with spun fabric row covers, which allow light to penetrate but provide several degrees of frost protection.

Fall vegetable gardens are easy to care for: There are far fewer bugs and blights during this season, and cooler temperatures limit the amount of moisture lost to evaporation, so an occasional deep soaking is all your plants will normally need. If you're new to vegetable gardening, fall is a great time to get started -- you're sure to have a successful harvest, which will build your confidence for next year. If you're an old hand, you already know that food gardens in fall are simply more fun and less work than summer crops. Leafy fall greens are also great companion plants for flowers. Swiss chard, mustard, lettuce and kale add texture and color to pots full of mums, asters, marigolds and other blooms.

You'll have more time to enjoy your fall garden if you stow the rake and simply mow over autumn leaves, crushing them to tiny shreds that disappear as you walk behind your mower. Crushed leaves decompose quickly and put nutrients back into the soil. Autumn leaves also make the world's best compost. Use the bagger attachment on a mulching mower to gather leaves, which will automatically be mixed with a few late-season grass clippings in a perfect blend for a compost pile. You can also use this mix of crushed leaves and grass clippings as mulch in flower beds. Mulch applied in fall helps hold moisture in the soil, protects plants from extreme soil temperature fluctuations and helps limit the germination of weed seeds. As the mulch breaks down over the winter, it adds nutrients to the soil, which puts you a few steps ahead of the game when spring comes around.

The best fall gardens have a way of turning your head, adding depth and beauty to a lovely new season. They're naturally rich in color and variety. This is a season for both harvesting and planting, for a fresh palette and a different gardening perspective. As the days grow shorter and the shadows grow longer, pull on a sweater and spend some time in the garden. There is so much to appreciate at this time of year.

(For editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker at chooker@amuniversal.com.)