Eden Garden Designer (free, iPhone)
The zen-like simplicity of this one is addictive. It’s so easy and relaxing to create virtual beds of gorgeous blooms which change through the seasons while the bees buzz lazily around, that your garden can easily end up a tad overblown -- but that’s half the fun of it because it’s just as easy to move or take out plants, or just start over and do it all again, and all absolutely free.

iScape ($3.99, universal)
An apps that lets you redesign your own garden in real time using a huge database of plants? It’s a tantalizing idea, but iScape’s huge online database took forever to download, and even then, the few plants and textures I could access were unfortunately only stored in my device’s cache, necessitating being online to use the app. Great software, optimized for iPad, but needs to be fully downloadable.

Gardening Toolkit ($2.99, iPhone)
If you want a generous database offering both basic and more in-depth information, this app by Applied Objects Ltd is for you. As useful for research as for practical planning, Toolkit contains all the information you’ll need, including seed germination time, plant spacing and difficulty rating. You can even make notes and customize your own to-do list. An organizational dream at $2.99.

Garden Planner ($3.99, iPhone)
Garden Planner (HD version for iPad is also $3.99), is more hands-on than most. Brilliant for your veggie garden, it lets you plan your beds by row. The app also allows for succession planting -- you can plant by month and then move through the year, seeing where and when you have space for other crops.

Garden ToDo ($1.99, iPhone)
Garden ToDo is a useful one-time list of things to do in the garden with a fixed category selection. This is like a tear-off-and-throw-away shopping list, but unfortunately it doesn’t let you program repeat tasks. At $1.99 this app could do with some more functionality, but is a useful reminder of upcoming tasks in the garden, and the priority swipe bar is fun to use.

Essential Garden Guide ($0.99, iPhone)
As an ebook, the Essential Garden Guide may provide similar information to many other books on gardening, but it’s still a useful app. Covering a wealth of subjects including types of gardens, varieties of plants, and their care, it’s easy to navigate and also boasts a blog feature that adds a magazine feel to the app with seasonal content and useful tips -- the pictures are luscious too.

Organic Gardening ($0.99, iPhone)
Want to start out in organics? Organic Gardening is another ebook -- and it's a deal considering a paper copy normally retails at $15.99. It has all the background information to growing organically, details of specific plants, and a troubleshooting chapter, a must in any introduction to the subject. A customizable layout makes it adaptable to your preferences.

Vegetable Gardening Guide ($2.99, universal)
The Vegetable Gardening Guide is just that, a guide to growing most common vegetables complete with recipes for your produce. It covers soil conditioning as well as basic types of garden and container gardening -- useful for those with small spaces. Although essentially an ebook, you can search it like a database with easily navigable headings.

Herbs+ ($2.99, iPhone)
Elegant, and useful, Herbs+ provides a lot of easy-to-find information on most well-known herbs. Several tabs offer tips and information about each herb, including culinary uses and medicinal applications. The app also offers general information about planting and maintaining your herb garden. This will be a boon to all those gardeners who want their herb info at their green fingertips.

Landscaper’s Companion ($4.99, iPhone)
This is a huge database of 7,000 plants in 16 categories, from bulbs to water plants to houseplants. Each category is stuffed with info on the plants, with a handy overview and plentiful details. An advanced search feature filters by attributes such as width and water requirements.