Yes, free garden planners exist, but most limit you to generic templates, watermarked exports, or low-resolution plans. Grid-style planners like the free tiers of Planter or VegPlotter work fine for mapping vegetable beds, and many university extension sites publish free planting layouts by region.
The catch is that none of them show your actual yard. A grid of plant icons tells you spacing, not how a cottage border looks against your front walk. People also ask ChatGPT for garden plans, which costs nothing but stays text-only and generic.
OutdoorBrite is a paid tool, no free tier, that generates realistic redesign concepts from a photo of your own garden. If you have been prompting a chatbot for ideas, compare that with a purpose-built ChatGPT landscape design approach before settling.