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Landscape Design Program that helps plan for Year Round Interest

CaroKate
9 years ago

I'm starting to plan landscaping at our new house & I want to make sure I have year round interest, a variety of interesting heights, and plants that are well suited for the area of the property's conditions.

Can anyone direct me to a website, app, or program that allows me to input my "dream list" of plants and see:

-When they bloom (or are at their most interesting...berries, color, etc)
-If it is evergreen or dies back
-Size
-Site growing requirements

I know you can find all this information separately in a good book, but I'm hoping to pull it all together and be able to see where I have "holes" in my plan so I'm not just choosing plants that are 12" high and bloom in May!

Double Bonus Points if it allows you to place the selected plants in a landcape to visualize the landscaped plan.

Appreciate the help!

Comment (1)

  • PRO
    Yardvaark
    9 years ago

    I don't know of a program that does what you wish. Typical affordable landscape design programs allow you to see -- kind of -- what you're creating, but other than that, they don't help with design decisions. They don't do a very good job of making plants look good and realistic. From what I've seen, it's not worth the time and trouble it takes to learn a program only to build a single yard from your efforts. Working it out on tracing paper over the top of a "to scale" base plan is more intuitive and is an easy way to do it if you can draw a circle. (There are circle templates.)

    That said, like most people, I think you are going about creating a landscape in a backwards way. You are focused on the objects you will use (your "dream list" of plants) and not on the space itself and how to make it into better property. Creating and preparing food is another design field with similar considerations. If you wanted to create a gourmet meal, would you first make a list of your favorite ("dream") ingredients? ... And then hope that after they were collected, you could come up with a delicious and beautiful gourmet meal by using all of them? I don't think it would happen! For the same reason, those who start out with a dream list of plants usually make something like a hodgepodge. Instead of thinking about any plants, it would be better to make an intense examination of the space itself, determining what is right and what is wrong with it. (This will mainly be views and grade.) Then think about the uses that it might serve ... a place for veg. garden, fire pit, swim pool, patio, car park, play turf, etc. And how auto and pedestrian traffic would flow so that access to all the yard's features would work without impediment. (This thread would be a good place to show that phase schemed out and get feedback on it.)

    Along the way, you would be thinking about how you're going to form the ceiling, walls and floor of the space you call your property. and how to create "windows" and "skylights" to the larger world outside of it. Ceilings and roofs come in package units called trees. "Walls" of any height are made of shrubs lined up in a row or from fence panels. The "floor" may change levels (with grade or groundcover) in order to assist with traffic control or for a dramatic effect, or to aid in long term maintenance.

    After all the needs have been determined and it has been figured out what shapes and forms the solutions will come in, it is time to think about what plants (primarily because of their shape and size characteristics) can be used to make them. As well, one would need/want artistic displays here and there. Those will be made of plants or plant groupings so there is plenty of opportunity to incorporate the plants that one finds appealing. In thinking about the needs before proposing solutions and developing a list of "building materials (plants), it is more likely that the finished product will function well and be attractive.