If you love gardening and have a creative streak, garden design software can help you create a beautiful yard that looks like you hired a professional landscaper. Whether you're designing your own yard, or starting your own garden design business, there is a program that will work for you.

Even the inexperienced home user can easily lay out flower beds, vegetable gardens, trees and hedges as well as walkways and hardscape. Knowing exactly how many materials and plants you will need can save money and time. Some programs will even suggest plants for certain conditions that you would never have thought of. The professional landscaper can save hours of design time by using the proper garden design software.

The best way to see if garden design software is right for you is to use it. Unfortunately, that can be a pricey proposition if you buy a program. The best programs can run into hundreds of dollars. If all you want is something simple for designing a home garden, then freeware is a great way to start. There are several places online where free garden design software can be found, and even one online garden planner, so that you can see exactly what is involved, and decide for yourself. The steps below explains exactly how to find free garden design software and make it work for you.

Before downloading any software, you have to make sure it will work with your computer. What you will need to know is:

1. Your Operating System (Windows XP, Vista, Mac OSX, Linux) 2. The amount of RAM your system has 3. How much free disk space is available. Remember that you need to leave enough space free to allow your operating system to function properly. 4. What kind of processor you have (Pentium, etc.) 5. Your processor speed

Writing all of this down and having it available will help you know if the software you find will work on your computer before you download and install it.

Before you download any free garden design software, make sure that your anti-virus is up to date. After downloading the program, scan the file with your anti-virus before installing.

There are several free garden design software offerings to choose from. They range from totally free to free trials, and all have different strengths and weaknesses.

Plan-a-Garden

If you don't have room on your computer for another program, you might want to check out Better Homes and Gardens' Plan-a-Garden http://www.planagarden.com , a self-contained site where you can use their program to design your garden. The best thing about Plan-a-Garden is that there is nothing to download. All the work is done online with their dynamic program.

Plan-a-Garden has drag and drop graphics, which make it quick and easy to use. The menu selection can be user-defined, with no required entries or fields. The program allows you to lay out tools in assorted colors and shapes. It includes a planting guide and a garden journal feature. It's from Better Homes and Gardens, so how can you go wrong?

Garden Planner

With Garden Plannerhttp://download.cnet.com/Garden-Planner/3000-18499_4-10285889.html by Artifact Interactive, you can create pathways, paving, and fences in addition to the garden. It has an easily understandable drag and drop interface with several features such as the ability to change foliage color and zoom in or out.

It is missing house templates, which take away the ability to create a spatial arrangement, but overall, it was given a 4 star rating by CNet. This program is free to try for 15 days, and under $20 to buy.

Showoff.com: The Visualizer

This easy to understand program lets you import a photo of your yard, then drag and drop elements into it. The negative to this program is that you still have to draw and scale your layout after you decide how it will look. Another minus is that the free version doesn't have many of the images you need, which are only available with an upgrade. http://showoff.com<ref>

3-D and CAD Tools

CAD (computer aided design) tools are often used to create landscape and garden plans. They are generally harder to learn, and require some understanding of spatial design, but if you are good at that sort of thing, they are worth a look.<ref>http://www.freebyte.com/cad/cad.htm#2D3DCADSystems

Once you have found the program you think will work for you, you need to download it. If you've never downloaded software before, you should know that most software comes in either a zip or executable file. Zip files will need a program like 7-Zip to extract the files so that they can be installed. Executable files only need to be double clicked to begin the installation process.

If the program comes in a zip file, you will want to create a folder for it, and download it directly there so that there is a place to unzip it. You can save executable files directly to your desktop, or save them in case something goes wrong, and you need to do the install again.

Keep in mind that if your disk space is limited, you don't want to keep both the installer and the program on your computer. If you wish to keep the installer, it's best to copy it to a disk.

All that's left is to design your garden. Whether you choose straight edges, curved lines, vegetables or flowers, garden design software can help you make your yard all it can be in a fraction of the time.