Designing gardens with Google Sketchup

If you posses a creative mind and you feel capable of designing your own garden then Google may have something that you might find useful. The Google Sketchup software is free to download and according to Google, very easy to use.

The great thing for you (and me) is the ability to plan and build several combinations of terrace or pergola and be able to save the file to your computer - no need for rubbers or draughtsman's magic tape for erasing or masking mistakes.

Just save the file 'as' and continue working and if it all gets too much then start a fresh.

Many garden designers are already well ahead of the game when it comes to using Sketchup although others have referred to it as their "quick and dirty system" and still prefer to use Vector or CAD.

Marzena at 4D Gardens has put a few Google images of gardens she has created using Sketchup. For the more advanced user there is Google Sketchup Pro enabling you to push and pull your work in and out of any CAD package. Pro will also support a host of file extensions making it a truly versatile and workable garden design package.

Before you put pen to paper - of should I say finger to keyboard, you may want to check out my articles on simple garden surveying parts one and two - this will give you all of the basic measurements for creating your garden to scale.