I have considered but never purchased any software for planning gardens or landscape design... yet. It is something I would love to have if I knew it would work as a useful tool. I had one given to me long ago that let you plant the plants and then it would "grow" them as you moved the timeline along so you could see how big they would get in 1, 3, 5, 20 or whatever years. Problem was it didn't seem to know what the true adult sizes of many plants were and there were some that could be "grown" to take over the entire yard. It was a bit lame in other areas too... Have any of you tried any landscape/garden design software programs? I would love to have some recommedations, warnings or feedback.
I have used Punch! Master Landscape Pro, but mine is several years old. It did some really neat things, but was not particularly user-friendly and had a pretty steep learning curve. Hopefully it has improved with the newer editions. It is really neat because you can input your own home into the program and design your garden, fly 3-d around it, and there's a huge plant library. Here's a few renderings I used to plan my garden in front (although the plan did get altered a bit in reality). I did use it to design the big garden in the back of the property, and it came out the best of any of the gardens I have.
