Create Beautiful Gardens: 5 Useful Free Garden Design Software Features

In today's increasingly competitive free garden design software market, some of the skills of professional landscape designers are already built into the software itself. For example, in the past we had to rely on the professionals to select appropriate plants that would thrive in your local climate. Today, the USDA Hardiness Zone Map is encoded in most paid and free software programs, so choosing appropriate plants for your climate has become much easier.

Over the years of using both free and paid garden design software for garden design projects for my clients, I have noticed that there are 8 "must have" features in the software that can help save a lot of time to save and avoid garden design mistakes:

1) Large searchable plant library with Hardiness Zone Maps

I cannot stress enough the importance of proper plant selection. Luckily, with the right software, accessing Hardiness Zone Maps is just a few clicks away. Experienced gardeners will tell you that there is no point in planting something that will not survive in your climate.

Therefore, to avoid the disappointment of seeing dying plants, it is important to know your hardiness zone before deciding which plants to have in your garden.

2) Ability to design gardens in 3D and create 2D drawings

From experience, many people including myself have trouble imagining what the garden will look like just by looking at a 2D drawing. Unfortunately, many professional landscape architects still like to communicate the garden design concept to their clients. For example, if you look at a plan from a bird's eye view, it's hard to imagine what a bird bath next to a raised bed looks like. Some customers absolutely love it; However, some customers want the bird bath Garden Design removed after installation. Such costly planning mistakes can be avoided if the customer is shown a 3D photo of the future garden.

However, 2D drawings are still important. It contains a lot of important information, such as the size of the garden and the location of each garden element. Therefore, it is crucial for paid and free garden design software to have both 2D and 3D design capabilities.

3) Ability to import your front yard or back yard photos

This type of free garden design software is probably the easiest to use and definitely the most practical for gardeners who only have a small garden to work on.

With this type of software, you can import your front yard photo and add garden elements around it. As such, it is particularly useful for making “before and after” comparisons. Some software can even create different lighting effects so you can see what your future garden will look like in the morning and at night.

However, if you have a large yard, this type of program probably isn't for you. The reason for this is that with a large garden in this type of program it is not possible to design every single detail.

4) Plant growth simulation

With the Hardiness Zone Maps installed in the software, some landscaping programs these days can also predict what your plants will look like in the next 3 months or 5 years. This is particularly important in order to be able to make adjustments to space conditions that are not immediately apparent.

Plus, it's also a great experience to see your garden getting more and more beautiful year after year without having to travel back in time!

5) Ease of use

The ease of use of your paid or free landscape design software is one of the most underrated features. Many aspiring gardeners pay too much attention to whether their software has a specific plant species in their plant library.

Of course, having a large library of plants is very important, but I always believe that gardeners should never limit our imaginations with software difficulties. If the software is way too difficult for you to use, just switch to another one as there are dozens of them.

These are the top 5 features that I will recommend to all garden lovers to keep in mind when looking to install any paid or free garden design software . Once you've made a wise decision and installed the right software, you're already a big step closer to the garden of your dreams.