Landscaping at your desktop is the name of the game in 3d Home Landscape Designer Deluxe, a package that helps you work on your yard without breaking a sweat--or risking costly mistakes. With a massive gallery of over 9,000 plants and yard features from deck chairs to playground equipment, this program gives users a chance to plan every aspect of an outdoor environment in minute detail, trying out as many different concepts as imagination and time permit. Though 3d Home Landscape allows you to focus on the interior of a home, it puts far more energy into exterior design. Terrain modeling makes it possible to mold the land itself to any specification before features are added, with hills and even lakes adding depth to a given project. Using this feature it is possible, with practice, to closely model your own land and then to analyze its design strengths.
Once time comes to actually lay down foliage, 3d Home Landscape's Plant Encyclopedia is there to help, carrying detailed information on maintaining every plant in a garden. Your finished designs can be previewed with an eye to how the yard will appear in all four seasons.
Like most home and garden design programs, this one will let you move through the three-dimensional model of your house and yard, viewing each creation from all angles. It is a complex program that requires patience in the learning stages. Fortunately, the user's guide is thoughtfully written and easy to use, and there are first-rate animated tutorials available with the program that cover each new stage of the landscaping process.
And once mastered, 3d Home Landscape can help you work out every imaginable garden design, no matter how wild or daring. --Alyx Dellamonica
Price: $14.99
