Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually, I'm
more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me keep up with
what is planted where and when, but I doubt that anything that specific is
available.

THANKS!

Steve wrote:

Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually, I'm
more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me keep up with
what is planted where and when, but I doubt that anything that specific is
available.


I just use an Excel spreadsheet - columns for plant name, description (if
necessary) date planted and location. Pretty simple and easily updated.
Compiling the thing in the first place is the most work - only then do you
realize exactly how many darn plants you have!

pam - gardengal

Steve wrote:

Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually, I'm
more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me keep up with
what is planted where and when, but I doubt that anything that specific is
available.

THANKS!

I just use an Excel spreadsheet - columns for plant name, description (if
necessary) date planted and location. Pretty simple and easily updated.
Compiling the thing in the first place is the most work - only then do you
realize exactly how many darn plants you have!

pam - gardengal

Oops! I failed to explain my entire desire. I would like to 'graph' the
plant's location in relation to others, the house, etc. so I am looking for
a way to graphically depict the landscape. I will be skipping the 'design'
step and using the design to maintain the inventory.

I am working on a database (that I will keep on my palm pilot) of the
details but would like the 'picture' as well.

Maybe that makes sense!

"Pam" wrote in message
...


Steve wrote:

Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually, I'm
more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me keep up
with
what is planted where and when, but I doubt that anything that specific
is
available.

THANKS!

I just use an Excel spreadsheet - columns for plant name, description (if
necessary) date planted and location. Pretty simple and easily updated.
Compiling the thing in the first place is the most work - only then do you
realize exactly how many darn plants you have!

pam - gardengal

Steve wrote:

Oops! I failed to explain my entire desire. I would like to 'graph' the
plant's location in relation to others, the house, etc. so I am looking for
a way to graphically depict the landscape. I will be skipping the 'design'
step and using the design to maintain the inventory.

I am working on a database (that I will keep on my palm pilot) of the
details but would like the 'picture' as well.

Maybe that makes sense!

Makes perfect sense! However, as a professional landscape designer, I have yet
to see the home software that is effective in achieving this result. The easiest
thing to do is get some graph paper and a pencil and sketch out your plantings.
It needn't be to scale - just a rough drawing of each planting area with the
plants designated and labeled. Changes are acccommodated easily and rapidly and
you can add notes about future changes, planting dates, etc. as you wish. This
is exactly what I do (no time to do drafted, scale drawings of my own garden!)
and my Excel inventory corresponds to each area. Since my plantings are pretty
intensive, this is far easier than using less than ideal software programs,
which seldom allows for the degree of layering and overlap that occurs in most
real life gardens.

pam - gardengal

There isn't one... but the boxes they come in look awefully good!!!

On Mon, 07 Apr 2003 15:03:09 GMT, "Steve" wrote:

Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually, I'm
more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me keep up with
what is planted where and when, but I doubt that anything that specific is
available.

THANKS!

ZMUD (oddly) is a game/chat client. Although it doesn't have anything to
do with landscaping, the mapping function allows graphical relationships
and uses an entailed database. The programt concerns internet
communication though, and in my brief experiance with it I read that
Zugg, its creator, was looking for profitable ideas. Perhaps you could
contact zuggsoft, having down all this work already in another fashion
and his understanding of abstracted time and spaces, may prove useful.

Steve wrote:

Oops! I failed to explain my entire desire. I would like to 'graph' the
plant's location in relation to others, the house, etc. so I am looking for
a way to graphically depict the landscape. I will be skipping the 'design'
step and using the design to maintain the inventory.

I am working on a database (that I will keep on my palm pilot) of the
details but would like the 'picture' as well.

Maybe that makes sense!

"Pam" wrote in message
...


Steve wrote:

Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually, I'm
more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me keep up
with
what is planted where and when, but I doubt that anything that specific
is
available.

THANKS!

I just use an Excel spreadsheet - columns for plant name, description (if
necessary) date planted and location. Pretty simple and easily updated.
Compiling the thing in the first place is the most work - only then do you
realize exactly how many darn plants you have!

pam - gardengal

Pencil and paper? Boy, that takes all the fun out of it! I just about have
my wife convinced I need more software, I can't let her see you post! You
two aren't in cahoots are you?

THANKS!

"Pam" wrote in message
...


Steve wrote:

Oops! I failed to explain my entire desire. I would like to 'graph' the
plant's location in relation to others, the house, etc. so I am looking
for
a way to graphically depict the landscape. I will be skipping the
'design'
step and using the design to maintain the inventory.

I am working on a database (that I will keep on my palm pilot) of the
details but would like the 'picture' as well.

Maybe that makes sense!

Makes perfect sense! However, as a professional landscape designer, I have
yet
to see the home software that is effective in achieving this result. The
easiest
thing to do is get some graph paper and a pencil and sketch out your
plantings.
It needn't be to scale - just a rough drawing of each planting area with
the
plants designated and labeled. Changes are acccommodated easily and
rapidly and
you can add notes about future changes, planting dates, etc. as you wish.
This
is exactly what I do (no time to do drafted, scale drawings of my own
garden!)
and my Excel inventory corresponds to each area. Since my plantings are
pretty
intensive, this is far easier than using less than ideal software
programs,
which seldom allows for the degree of layering and overlap that occurs in
most
real life gardens.

pam - gardengal

On Mon, 07 Apr 2003 21:30:27 GMT, Pam wrote:
Steve wrote:

Oops! I failed to explain my entire desire. I would like to 'graph' the
plant's location in relation to others, the house, etc. so I am looking for
a way to graphically depict the landscape. I will be skipping the 'design'
step and using the design to maintain the inventory.

I am working on a database (that I will keep on my palm pilot) of the
details but would like the 'picture' as well.

Maybe that makes sense!

Makes perfect sense! However, as a professional landscape designer, I have yet
to see the home software that is effective in achieving this result. The easiest
thing to do is get some graph paper and a pencil and sketch out your plantings.
It needn't be to scale - just a rough drawing of each planting area with the
plants designated and labeled. Changes are acccommodated easily and rapidly and
you can add notes about future changes, planting dates, etc. as you wish. This
is exactly what I do (no time to do drafted, scale drawings of my own garden!)
and my Excel inventory corresponds to each area. Since my plantings are pretty
intensive, this is far easier than using less than ideal software programs,
which seldom allows for the degree of layering and overlap that occurs in most
real life gardens.

I agree with Pam. Gardening is too random and/or too full of variables
to make for an easy computer app to suit particular needs.

I searched on "landscape design software" and turned up several
interesting-looking references. However, having had several
experiences trying to use various CAD packages, I'd say unless one
were planning to master the software and go into the business of
supplying plans to others, some graph paper and a pencil with an
eraser will probably yield a better return.

Steve wrote:

Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually,
I'm more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me
keep up with what is planted where and when, but I doubt that
anything that specific is available.


I'm thinking about doing something like this. It can be done in Excel-
you can make the cells perfectly square and have them represent a square
foot apiece. You could place circular shaped objects over this to
represent plants, and resize them, even color them to taste. The details
get a little complicated- it may take some programming experience- but
Excel does have the tools to do this. I'm pretty sure that you also
could hyperlink the plant objects to their inventory sheet, so that you
could have a map on one sheet and have your inventory on another, and be
able to access the plant on the inventory sheet by clicking on its map
picture and vice versa. I ordered a lot of things by mail this year. I
made a map with a demo version of Quick Draw Plus (worth a free try,
better suited to blueprints and circuit diagrams, but does include some
yard objects), imported that into an Excel document, and on another page
made a spreadsheet of plants that I was interested in. Going through
catalogs, I would enter the vendor, their website, price, and catalog
item number, and at the bottom it would show each vendor listed with the
total amount of my order from them. Then I could order the list by
vendor, go to the website, and go down the list entering the item
numbers that I had copied down. It's pretty versatile software.
Aside from the PITA of entering everything the first time, I had a lot
of trouble getting really good measurements of the distances between
everything, and the present and assumed future sizes of my plants. The (
sometimes steep) slope of my yard complicates that.
Still, just for the fun and challenge, I may try developing something
that would let you diagram your yard and enter your plants into it,
allowing you to enter information about the plants and maybe track
things (when fertilized, when to prune). If so, it's either going to be
in Excel or a Mac OS X native application, at least at first. That
leaves out Windows users who don't have Excel, but that's the breaks.
Apple gives you the developer tools for free, but it would cost a grand
or so for something that would facilitate that kind of database app in
Windows. If anything happens, I'll post it here, but don't hold your
breath. It's fairly complicated and it's a third priority.

Now that sounds like something I could use! I've forgotten most of what I
knew about Excel so the development sounds over my head but I would love to
'test' the concept if you find the time to develop it. I'll keep my 'eye' on
this thread!

Steve

wrote in message
...

Steve wrote:

Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually,
I'm more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me
keep up with what is planted where and when, but I doubt that
anything that specific is available.


I'm thinking about doing something like this. It can be done in Excel-
you can make the cells perfectly square and have them represent a square
foot apiece. You could place circular shaped objects over this to
represent plants, and resize them, even color them to taste. The details
get a little complicated- it may take some programming experience- but
Excel does have the tools to do this. I'm pretty sure that you also
could hyperlink the plant objects to their inventory sheet, so that you
could have a map on one sheet and have your inventory on another, and be
able to access the plant on the inventory sheet by clicking on its map
picture and vice versa. I ordered a lot of things by mail this year. I
made a map with a demo version of Quick Draw Plus (worth a free try,
better suited to blueprints and circuit diagrams, but does include some
yard objects), imported that into an Excel document, and on another page
made a spreadsheet of plants that I was interested in. Going through
catalogs, I would enter the vendor, their website, price, and catalog
item number, and at the bottom it would show each vendor listed with the
total amount of my order from them. Then I could order the list by
vendor, go to the website, and go down the list entering the item
numbers that I had copied down. It's pretty versatile software.
Aside from the PITA of entering everything the first time, I had a lot
of trouble getting really good measurements of the distances between
everything, and the present and assumed future sizes of my plants. The (
sometimes steep) slope of my yard complicates that.
Still, just for the fun and challenge, I may try developing something
that would let you diagram your yard and enter your plants into it,
allowing you to enter information about the plants and maybe track
things (when fertilized, when to prune). If so, it's either going to be
in Excel or a Mac OS X native application, at least at first. That
leaves out Windows users who don't have Excel, but that's the breaks.
Apple gives you the developer tools for free, but it would cost a grand
or so for something that would facilitate that kind of database app in
Windows. If anything happens, I'll post it here, but don't hold your
breath. It's fairly complicated and it's a third priority.

I'm using Microsoft Visio (professional) this year. I bought it for other
small business applications but it has a landscaping module. Nothing fancy,
mostly generic shapes you'd find on a stencil. Before Viso I used pencil
and graph paper with the staedler landscaping stencil kit you can find at
Office Depot.
mm
"Kevin Miller" wrote in message
news:4F4744435272F4F9.BA2DE50E637FE3C6.6104E480FCA ...

There isn't one... but the boxes they come in look awefully good!!!

On Mon, 07 Apr 2003 15:03:09 GMT, "Steve" wrote:

Does anyone know of a good program for landscape design? Actually, I'm
more interested in a 'landscape inventory' program to help me keep up
with
what is planted where and when, but I doubt that anything that specific
is
available.

THANKS!