Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 7.0 [OLD VERSION]

List Price: $69.99 Discount Price: $62.99

Features:

• Find your plants with a newly designed search tool - Search according to shade/sun requirements, growth attributes and more
• Import a photo and add landscaping, create an outdoor living space or design the exterior of your home
• Add water features to your landscape such as pools, ponds and streams
• The Growth Slider tool shows what your plants will look like in 0-20 years
• Choose from a Library of more than 4,000 items, including over 1,500 plants

Customer Reviews:

Frustrating to work with but I'm content with the end results [Posted on 2007-10-27]
This program gave me what I needed in the end but the frustration with it is never-ending. Some of this frustration is certainly due to my lack of understanding about how the product works best. In other words, I've watched few of the tutorials and read nothing. However, I do try to problem-solve with the products training and help options when necessary. Here are a few examples of my frustrations. 1) the plant list is not adequate and often inappropriate (you can't plant a common garden plant like lettuce but you can find a cranberry plant!), 2) You have little flexibility in designing the shape of objects like a patio or walkway, 3) If you have a 10' x 10' deck and try to cut and paste a 10' x 10' gazebo onto it you will have to downsize the gazebo first because the program does not allow for the gazebo to overlap the deck so you're paste would have to be perfectly centered for it to work, 4) I could not size a pergola so that the roof crossbeams would extend out over my deck, 5) sometimes items overlap and the item on the bottom cannot be moved unless you uncover it, sounds simple but it can be a big headache.

So that all said I gave the product 3 stars because it got me what I needed, a landscaping plan that my wife and I can agree on. I've spent countless hours working with it and knowing the limitations up front can save time along the way.

Not bad for the money... [Posted on 2008-01-14]
For the money, it's worth it. Though I must advise - it's easier to create your design from scratch or use their pre-installed plans as your starting point, than to upload your own images. You'll have to take time to learn how to use the features but that's true of any software. The plant library is not exhaustive and they could have added a wider range of garden furniture and ornaments.

Homes Yes, Gardens No [Posted on 2008-02-07]
Possibly a great product for designing a home, but not so great for gardens. What a gardener needs is a plan that will print out easily with the plant labels marked on the plan so you can carry it out to the garden and know where to put which plants. This product creates blank circles for plants that are approximately the width your plants will be, but no labels unless you add a text label. If you then decide to re-arrange the garden plan, you have to move the plant and then move the label -- twice the work. Also, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER use their plant "aging" feature. If you correctly listed the width of your plants originally as they will be full-grown, the aging feature will change them permanently.

Also be aware that you cannot place plants in the "raised beds" available as a landscape feature. If you then use their 3-D imaging, the raised beds are really raised ... on top of whatever plants you placed in them on your plan. A raised bed sitting on top of 10 tomato plants looks interesting in 3 D to say the least.

It's an okay program, but difficult to use, and you have to buy the additional plant library if you want anything more than the basics. Good customer service.

Good consumer product to get rough landscape ideas [Posted on 2008-02-17]
The software was not what I expected. The 3D tools and views are incredible and can give the average person some ideas on how their landscape would look with some new shrubs, trees, deck, etc. However, I needed to use this software to draw 2D sketches for landscape companies. I freelance with small landscape businesses to draw 2D sketches of residential and commercial landscaping proposals. In the 2D view of this software, you are limited to just a handful of shapes to represent trees and shrubs. Such as a small shrub is a small circle and a larger tree is represented by just a larger circle. If I wanted to do that I could have bought a regular drawing program. You will not have any views of the thousands of trees and shrubs available in the program unless you view it in a 3D virtual tour type view. Really not the right fit for me since I need to provide a sheet of paper to my clients who then send it to their customers.

Better than nothing! [Posted on 2008-04-12]
It was very helpful in planning my landscaping. Getting my home roof correct was tricky and my property has some slope in the front and I had a very hard time making it right. I planted 17 different varities of plants and I found about half of them in their plant directory.

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