Hi Daniel I found your website and e-book an informative and interesting read. I must admit some of the ingredients listed in the xls would be hard for me to source though. I think it may be quite useful to be able to alter values for the individual components as the percentages may vary between similar products and also from country to country. An option to add something new to the database may be handy too. Looking at various formulation software there are a few features for the average hobby grower but not too many. These may serve as a source of inspiration for further ideas. http://www.suntec.co.nz/nutron.htm http://www.smart-fertilizer.com/

You might want to visit the Landscape Design forum and search the archives for this topic........it comes up frequently and various products have been suggested. And with varying degrees of recommendation :-) Some are very workable and user-friendly, others much less so. Generally the free programs are less flexible and efficient than those that are purchased. Like the graph paper/pencil route, design software is only a tool and will offer the best results with a good understanding of basic design principles and the plants and their requirements. Some find the pseudo 3-dimensional aspect many programs offer easier to visualize than just plan views created on paper. But you need to be cautious about some of the photoshop aspects, which can distort scale and spacing and alter perspective. And show everything blooming at the same time as well :-) Personally, I prefer the graph paper and circle template, but then I was trained in hand drafting and feel very compfortable with that method. Another handy tool is to take photos of the area in question, blow them up to a workable size and then do tissue paper overlays sketching in the appropriate plants at the appropriate sizes. That combined with a layout to scale on graph paper should get you a long way. There are also various DIY landscaping texts that would be helpful. Sunset's Western Landscaping, the companion to the Western Garden Book, is pretty good. My library is still packed or I'd suggest others but Lowe's and HD usually have a decent selection in their book/magazine area. Look through and find one that presents a reasonable discussion of design principles and a step by step method to preparing a design. That should help a LOT!

Some people will print to an image file and then color it in photoshop. Some will then use one of the effects such as "watercolor" to loosen the rendering up a bit. I don't color render very often. When I do it is usually for a commercial project that is not overly detailed with landscape plants. What I do is to take my plant blocks used in the drawing and re-insert them into the drawing at a scale of one. I snap a line to the insertiom point of the block and then explode the block. Then I draw a circle around the outline of the plant on its own layer. I copy the circle twice, placing one so the center is slightly up to the left of the center of the original and one slightly down to the right. I trim the part of the upper right circle which goes outside of the one that fits the plant symbol. I also trim the part of the lower right circle that is inside of the plant circle. That gives me three areas to color with solid hatching. I do light, shade,& shadow. Then use the drawing order command to push them behind the linework of the symbol. Then I redefine the block and it changes all of them in the drawing to have the color.You can freeze the color layers if you want to print just the line work. Then I solid hatch other areas being careful to manage the drawing order to keep linework on top. (sorry about the blue linework, it is usually black, but I was in a hurry - this one is also done with the shadow to the lower left and I described it to the lower right)

Velkommen