Gardening & Landscaping
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Landscape design software?
We recently bought a house and it has no landscaping at all (literally has dirt for the front and back yards). I doubt we have the budget for a landscape designer but thinking maybe there is a design software that would be more budget friendly? Any recommendations? I just don't even know where to start to begin with different types of bushes, what blooms when etc!! TIA!
Re: Landscape design software?
You might think you'll save money, but I wouldn't advise that.
You can buy decent CAD software for around $3000, but many programs charge much more for "licensing agreements". Sometimes you can snag software for $1200-$1500, but it is very complicated if you don't know how to use it.
The advantage of hiring someone else is not only can they create a plan, they also know more about plants than most homeowners. If you know nothing about plants, why would you not hire someone else? And in most cases, designers have been through design school. People who haven't are notoriously bad at designing. Combine that with the expense of replacing all the plants that die because you put them in the wrong soil/sun/water situation.
Hire someone. It's not as simple as you're thinking, and it won't look as good.
Google SketchUp is an easy to use 3D design program that's free. It's not a landscaping program specifically, but you can use it to make a scale model of your yard and look at different layouts.
Mother Earth Garden planner is an online program for edibles that I like to use to plan our vegetables every year.
As for what plants to use, I recommend the Sunset Garden Book for your area, There's are Western, Southern and Northeastern editions. A local nursery (not HD or Lowes) is invaluable for help with plant selection & troubleshooting--we can bring leaves that are diseased or yellowing in and they'll help us diagnose & fix it. Ours also carries all the supplies for hard & soft scaping that we need for our project.