Planning Guide Library
Our gardens are an opportunity to express our style and creativity in living color. These free digital guides will help you grow beautifully, confidently, and responsibly. Get inspiring landscape plans, garden design ideas, and gardening tips from this treasure trove of digital guides created by the experts and craftsmen here at Monrovia. You can find our most recent guides at the bottom of the page.
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2024 Guides
Weekend Project Guide
Best Plants and New Design Updates for Your Garden
Make the most of your time in the garden with three beautifully illustrated plans, flexible design formulas, and plant lists. The Weekend Project Guide is the perfect way to kickstart your weekend garden projects with a vision and the confidence you need to make a big impact in a small amount of time.
Shades of Beautiful
Plant Palettes for Spring and Summer 2024
Creating stunning plant combinations in the garden can be daunting. But it doesn’t have to be. Our “Shades of Beautiful” guidebook offers 10 palettes you can take with you on your next trip to the garden center. Use our plant recommendations, or just let the fresh color combos inspire new choices. With these gorgeous palettes, you can achieve eye-catching beauty this season.
Front Yard Design
Creative Design Formulas for Instant Curb Appeal
The Front Yard Design guide makes updating your front yard easy with a simple "foolproof formula" approach. The guide includes three landscape plans that offer a variety of plant choices and design tips that can be tailored to your yard, growing conditions, and style preferences.
Each landscape plan showcases a key trend in garden styling, allowing you to "choose your own adventure" and create the front yard of your dreams!
2024 Distinctive Selections Guide
Exceptional Plants for 2024
The Distinctive Selections book offers an in-depth look at our most anticipated plants of 2024. This 82-page book features nearly 250 plants that, like all Monrovia-grown plants, have been carefully trialed and tested; only the best plants make the cut. There's something here for any garden challenge, collection, or space.
Monrovia's Distinctive Selections plants have been proven to have reliable, top-performing traits such as extended bloom periods, more blooms, more disease resistance, and better growth habits.
2023 Guides
Ultimate Project Planning Guide
Landscape Plans, Plant Lists, and
Design Tips for Your Outdoor Projects
This Ultimate Project Planning Guide provides 10 free landscape plans and plant lists to inspire your next outdoor upgrade. The plans are split into two groups – large “Outdoor Living Projects” that make a big impact but require more time and planning; and smaller “Weekend Projects” that can make a small space beautiful in just a couple of days.
Shades of Beautiful
Plant Palettes for Spring 2023
Elevate your color choices with the 2023 edition of the "Shades of Beautiful" guidebook. This comprehensive guidebook showcases 10 distinct plant palettes that demonstrate how to artfully blend color and texture in your garden. Drawing inspiration from the latest design trends, each palette highlights specific plants and provides useful guidelines to help you create stunning combinations. Allow these striking color combinations to inspire your plant selections for the year.
Weekend Project Guide
7 Easy Ways to Make the Most
of Your Weekends in the Garden
With beautifully illustrated plans, design advice, and plant lists, the Weekend Project Guide makes it easy for you to kickstart simple garden projects that make a big impact. Our newest guide combines the popular weekend project landscape plans from our Ultimate Planning Guide with two bonus plans for quick ideas to try this spring.
Monrovia's Rose Guide
Get a Pro-Level Look at
Our Top Rose Varieties
Not sure which rose to choose or even what the difference between all of them is? Get your answers with the Monrovia Rose Guide. Originally created for retailers, this digital book offers a pro-level look at all things roses, including a side-by-side chart for at-a-glance variety comparison.
Plus: You'll get all the answers about the best roses to buy, how to care for them, and ways to use them in the garden.
Outdoor Living Guide
Transform Your Outdoor Living Spaces
Whether you're craving more areas to entertain or seeking a relaxing lounge space, the five free landscape plans, valuable design tips, and plant lists will get you started on the backyard oasis of your dreams.
With our outdoor living guide in hand, you'll have the inspiration and knowledge to transform your outdoor space into a more inviting environment that you can enjoy for years to come.
Backyard Habitat Guide: New Edition
Create a Garden That's Abundant in Life and Beauty
The Backyard Habitat Guide is designed to support you as you use your garden to create an abundant space of beauty that is interactive, vibrant, and full of life. Inside, you’ll find three different habitat garden sections: hummingbird, backyard birding, and bee and butterfly.
In our new updated edition, each section includes two illustrated landscape designs by Lisa Nunamaker of Paper Garden Workshop, plant lists, and expert tips for building a healthy habitat.
Simply Beautiful
Versatile Planting Plans for Every Garden
The Simply Beautiful design guide makes designing a garden easy with a simple "foolproof formula" approach that includes three landscape plans that can be tailored to your yard, growing conditions, and style preferences.
Each landscape plan depicts a common garden design need and showcases a key trend in garden styling. Not only will you get multiple plant choices, but also design style inspiration and problem-solving plans for your most challenging spaces.
2022 Guides
Backyard Habitat Guide
Create a Garden Full of Life and Beauty
Want to attract a variety of pollinators to your garden? This guide is designed to help you create an abundant space of beauty that is interactive, vibrant, and full of life. Inside, you’ll find three unique habitat garden sections: a hummingbird garden, a backyard birding garden, and a bee and butterfly garden.
Each section includes an illustrated landscape design by Lisa Nunamaker of Paper Garden Workshop, a suggested plant list, and expert tips for building a healthy habitat.
Shades of Beautiful
Plant Palettes for Spring 2022
Refine your palette with the 2022 “Shades of Beautiful” guidebook. It offers 10 plant palettes that illustrate how to confidently use color, shape, and texture when combining plants. Inspired by the latest trends in color, these palettes feature specific plants as well as general guidelines. Take these recommendations along with you to the garden center, and let the color combos inspire your selections this year.
Landscape Style Guide
Landscape design plans and plant lists
to inspire your dream garden
This style lookbook explores the top five trends shaping gardens today while illustrating how to create lasting beauty that delights for decades.
It includes examples of each trend in a real-life garden, easy tips to achieve the look, landscape plans (by illustrator and landscape architect Lisa Nunamaker), and plant lists that demonstrate how to turn the inspiration into a reality.
Distinctive Selections
Beautiful, Exceptional Plants for 2022
The Distinctive Selections guide offers an in-depth look at our most celebrated and anticipated plants of 2022. This 40-page guide features more than 140 exclusive plants that have been trialed and tested carefully to ensure only the best new plants make the cut. With that many varieties, there's something for any garden challenge, collection, or space.
These Monrovia exclusives have reliable, top-performing traits such as longer bloom periods, more blooms, more disease resistance, and better growth habits.
Simply Beautiful
Beautiful Garden Design Made Easy
Like a garden design course distilled down to its most beautiful and elemental foundation, this guide will walk you through the 7 must-have plant types that every garden needs, and why yours needs them.
Plus, we include an easy-to-follow plan by landscape architect Lisa Nunamaker so you can see how all of the elements come together.
2021 Guides
Low Water, High Beauty
Drought-Tolerant Gardening Guide 2021
Gardeners across the West are experiencing the hottest, driest growing conditions they’ve seen in decades. But with the right care and plants, Western gardens are just as resilient as Western gardeners. They persevere through heat, drought, and even smoke.
To help you through these dry times, we curated a list of drought-tolerant plants and water-smart tips; find them all in this visually captivating and informative drought-tolerant garden guide.
Shades of Beautiful
Plant Palettes for Spring 2021
Creating stunning plant combinations in the garden can be daunting. But it doesn’t have to be. Our “Shades of Beautiful” guidebook offers 10 palettes you can take with you on your next trip to the garden center. Use our plant recommendations, or just let the fresh color combos inspire new choices. With these gorgeous palettes, you can achieve eye-catching beauty this season.
Need Help With Your Garden Plan?
If you're dreaming of a lush, vibrant garden but are overwhelmed with where to start, Monrovia can help. Get inspired with the help of our grow guides and beautiful garden photos that showcase endless possibilities. Whether you have a clear-cut summer garden plan or simply want to enhance your curb appeal with some dazzling perennials, we have the inspiration (and selection) to bring your vision to life.
Explore our inspirational guides today and start growing beautifully.
