In my bid to make Landscape Juice a respected and sought after site for the landscaping and horticulture industry I am delighted to welcome Neil Bromhall as a guest author.
Neil is accredited with creating Complete Gardens plant selector pruning guide encyclopaedia CD-ROM and he will be launching it's latest 3,500 plant version with over 9,000 photographs at the Chelsea Flower Show Stand East Avenue 30 this coming May.
Neil will also be launching launching Complete Gardens stream download of the 2,700 plant version so that customers can try out the software before deciding to buy the CD-ROM or to licence the software for a year.
British made the PC MAC compatible software was awarded Best New Product at the Glee Garden Trade Show 2006. We are proud of this and hope that the 3,500 version will prove even more useful. The CD-ROM is proving popular because of it's wealth of plant care and illustrated pruning advice written in layman's terms, ease of use and images to help identification and seasonal changes.
The idea of making an interactive plant selector CD-ROM was whilst I was working as a wildlife cameraman on the BBC David Attenborough's 'The Private Life Of Plants' series.
I filmed many of the time-lapse sequences which speeds up the plant growth. It was a fascinating series to work on. Much of the filming is done in my studio where I can control the light, temperature humidity etc.
When the sequences were completed most of the plants ended up in my garden, but I didn't know when or how to prune them. I also had a friend who said that she had a splash of colour in spring but nothing for the rest of the year because she didn't know what to plant in her clay soil, what to grew in the shade or full sun or up her garage wall.
It seemed an obvious idea to make a CD-ROM and let the computer to do the laborious searching for you within seconds and displaying just the right plants for your particular garden conditions and needs. e.g. flower and leaf colour, height, month / season, aspect or search by its Latin or common name,
Most of the competition garden software comes from abroad, many of the plants and pest diseases are not relevant to the UK plus the software is now very old.
I started the project by finding good authors with earth under their fingernails, I being the garden novice, designed the CD-ROM from the end users point of view plus I did much of the photography and then found a computer programmer to bring the CD-ROM alive.
We exhibited at Hampton Court Flower Show and people liked the CD-ROM and so we gradually built the plant collection over the years to 2,000 plants then 2,700 plants,3,000 plants and now 3,500 plants. As the plant collection grows so does the plant links from the CD-ROM to specialist suppliers.
We made a PC MAC version to cater for the many Garden Designers, students and home users who use Macs.
Streaming. This allows the customer to 'download' the software over the internet directly to their computer. When they sign off all that is left on the computer are their notes and plant lists. Their computer is not filled with over 9,000 images and the streaming runs faster than a CD-ROM. We think that this option will prove popular as it means the plant data is instantly available when they want it anywhere in the World. Streaming also has the advantage that the customer can get instant upgrades if required.
For more information please see our website www.complete-gardens.co.uk .
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