"renwok" wrote in message
om...
Hello,

In searching google groups and all sorts of gardening webpages, i
have come across the names of a few landscape packages. Such as:
Sierra Complete Land Designer, Autodesk Architectular desktop,
Landscape3d, Master Landscape, and Grow it gold; to name a few. Now
many of these seem to be pretty good (of course at least on of those
is WAY out of my price range). Where i run into problems, is that I
don't know if any of these has native support for Southwestern plants
and xeriscaping. Thats one of the features i need, the other being
support for importing a photo of the house to be landscaped. I don't
mind if the software has
a steep learning curve. Any recommendations would be greatly
appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Yours,

k31


There has been considerable discussion on garden software over the past few
years and the consensus is it doesn't exist--yet.

I've used Sierra and Broderbund, both stink. Sierra crashes a lot and both
are OK if you are designing a whole landscape of trees and bushes, but
absolutely stink when trying to design perennial beds and/or vegetable
gardens.

Paper and colored pencils really are better. For each bed, I take 4 pieces
of paper and label them Spring, Early Summer, M/L Summer and Fall. Circles
are the plants, they are colored in with their bloom color on the
corresponding sheet and are colored in green on the sheet when not in bloom.
It's worked well for me.

--
Kristen
Zone 6, SE NY