There has been a recent surge of studies in plant biology that combine experimental data with computational modeling. Here, we categorize a diversity of theoretical models and emphasize the need to tailor modeling approaches to the questions at hand. Models can start from biophysical or purely heuristic basic principles, and can focus at several levels of biological organization. Recent examples illustrate that this entire spectrum can be useful to understand plant development, and point to a future direction where more approaches are combined in fruitful ways--either by proving the same result with different basic principles or by exploring interactions across levels, in the so-called multilevel models.