by Rena Sherwood

Created on: October 01, 2008   Last Updated: October 01, 2011

The use of landscape software takes a lot of the guesswork out of designing and choosing plants and other features for your property. A lot about gardening and landscaping resides in the realm of theory. But a lot of modern gardeners aren't used to working with theory. They want to see pictures to help guide their gardening or landscaping efforts.

When you plant a sapling, you have to picture in your imagination how it will look in a decade and how it will look in relation to everything else in your yard. If you have a headache, then imagination can be difficult. Garden design software helps act as a virtual crystal ball to help you peek into your garden's future.

Features Included

Although each one will be is different, landscaping design software should be able to help you with planning and maintaining your outdoor space in an understandable way. They should at least have:

A 2-D drafting program, usually based on SmartDraw, to make you draw up blueprints

A personal organizer to help remind you of what gardening tasks to do
Lists of choices about what plants would work best for your area
Some fun features on low-cost landscaping software include three dimensional blueprints of your dream garden; plant and gardening encyclopedias and tips for helping to build decks. They also can show you as to what your garden may look like in the coming years, depending on all of the data yo feed into it.

Should You Use Free Programs?

Free landscaping software has been around since the 1990's. Some gardeners swear by it while many others swear at it. There are some major disadvantages to free landscape design software that you need to be aware of.

First off, one of the reasons that the free landscaping software is free is that there isn't any tech support or customer service to help answer your questions. Once you download it, you are basically on your own. In order to get help for your free landscape design software, you would need to go find an online forum that focuses on free shareware. You would ask your question on the forum, cross your fingers and hope some kind soul takes pity on you and gives you the help you need.

Many free programs aren't in color, which can be a drawback to some people.

Another problem is that many of these free programs haven't been updated for years. One such program is called Custom LandDesigner, which stopped updating in 1998. This means these programs lack the latest computer security features or that the old program just won't get on well with your new computer.

In conclusion, it's a small investment to purchase the best lawn care software or garden design software that you can afford.

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