laag has offered about two of the best two choices for landscape software. One other software program might be worth your effort to checkout is LandCADD. All three will give you most of what you are looking for. Pro Land and LandCADD have plant data bases that can be edited for your personal or region or nation wide use. Just remember that any landscape program will not really "design" a landscape that is your responsibility. That comment was meant only as a reminder for others that might not know or admit they didn't know what landscape software is all about. I 've used Pro Landscape several years back and felt it was one of the top programs back then - cost was $999. I know that LandCADD is around 1.5 - 2K in cost. Maybe more. Others might know where to find these programs at a cheaper price if so hopefully they'll let us know. Jake

Hey Scott, I really like the program they have. You get a 30 day free trial period and then it's $25.00 ( I think) annually from there. Like anything, it takes a little time to get used to but very user friendly. It was recently upgraded. I like the visual display which will alert you to rotate crops and the recommended number of plants. The plant list shows appropriate planting times from indoors to direct and each plant has a nice description available. I make notes in the planting guide of plant dates and update that for future reference. I think it is a good and valuable to use from year to year. I even use it for my separate fall garden planting. Hope that is helpful. Feel free to ask more questions if you want. Good luck.

TY for the feedback. What do you use for a designing program?

The key issue is whether you are trying to design the house or create construction documents - two very different goals. Many homeowners tend to think of the "design" of a house as a "plan" when, in reality, it is just one of many ways to help someone to visualize the actual design and it is not always a very good one for complex designs. Plans, elevations, details and schedules work well for builders because they aren't trying to evaluate the overall design, only build the house one piece at a time. IMHO nothing compares to SketchUp for preliminary design at any price (SketchUp basic is free, SketchUp Pro is $495, the Student version of Pro is $49/year and a trial version of Pro is free.) Since it is unlikely a homeowner will have the knowledge to draw a set of construction documents I would suggest sticking to preliminary design and hiring someone with the proper experience to do the rest. A SketchUp model can be easily looked at in plan view especially with the Section Tool shown in the link below. It doesn't take a skilled drafter much time to enter the information from a SketchUp model into a 2D CAD file because the drafter can use the tape measure tool to find all of the dimensions (if they are not already labeled in the model) and it is possible to import a 2D version into almost any CAD program (Pro has DXF export and the free version will need a plugin script that is available free online.) SketchUp may seem intuitive and for a grade school student it is but for a house designer it has so many valuable features that it requires taking a course at a school or online to be used effectively. You should study and experiment for a month before starting to design your house. There are books available at Amazon and online courses from SketchUp and from SketchUp for Dummies/aidanchopra.com. When I open a SketchUp model from 10 years ago I am surprised at how few of the features I was able to use. There is never an end to learning with any CAD program. Each new version of the software adds incredible features. SketchUp view inside model