Learn About Gardens

Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 7.0
Price: $26.88

Find your plants with a newly designed search tool – Search according to shade/sun requirements, growth attributes and more
Import a photo and add landscaping, create an outdoor living space or design the exterior of your home
Add water features to your landscape such as pools, ponds and streams
The Growth Slider tool shows what your plants will look like in 0-20 years
Choose from a Library of more than 4,000 items, including over 1,500 plants

Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 7.0
Product Description
Better Home and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 7.0 provides even more tools for all outdoor projects including Landscaping, Decks & Patios, Water Features, Outdoor Living, Site Planning and Cost Estimating. Find your plants with a newly designed search tool. Import your own photos and arrange plants exactly the way you want. Landscaping templates quickly place pre-arranged landscaping beds. Terrain Wizard imports the specifications of your terrain. Choose from a Library of more than 5,500 items for your designs, including over 2,000 plants. The Exclusive Better Homes and Gardens Plant Encyclopedia and Plant Hardiness Zone Reference maps are included.Amazon.com
Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 7.0 is the latest in outdoor design software by Chief Architect. Planning the perfect outdoor living space has never been easier with powerful tools for landscaping, decks and patios, site planning, and cost estimation. Choose from a variety of over 1,500 plants with Plant Chooser and start designing today!

Plan and design the perfect outdoor living space

Watch Product Video

Outdoor living designs

Over 2000 plants

Deck and patio design

Plant hardiness zone maps

Garden and landscaping templates

Powerful Design Software
Plan and design the perfect outdoor living space! Landscaping and Deck Designer makes it easy to quickly design the virtual look and feel of your backyard, deck, patio, pool or any outdoor project. Just point-and-click to add pre-arranged landscaping beds and any of over 4,000 library items to your design. Choose from an array of terrain feature and design tools. It’s quick and it’s easy!

When you need inspiration and ideas for your design, just turn to the Design Inspiration Gallery for help. Look through a collection of beautiful photographs to spark your creativity. Or get expert advice, tips and techniques from the editors of Better Homes and Gardens magazines. We’ve gathered all the information and inspiration you need!

Landscaping and Deck Designer makes it easy! Use valuable resources like Plant Chooser, Design Planning Center and over 2,000 plants, trees and shrubs to place and arrange in your outdoor living space.

Landscaping

Plant Chooser–Find the plant you want with this newly designed search tool! Search according to shade and sun requirements, growth attributes, deer resistance, ease of growth and, much, more!
Exclusive Design Planning Center for expert design advice, tips, and guidelines.
Landscaping templates designed by Better Homes and Gardens quickly places pre-arranged landscaping beds.
Terrain Wizard imports the specifications of your terrain.
Choose from a Library of more than 4,000 items for your designs, including over 1,500 plants.
Design and visualize in 3D, including Virtual Tours.
Import your own photos of houses, plants, people, and more.

Decks and Patios

Design single or multi-level decks with Deck Designer tools, complete with automatic deck framing.
Patio Design assigns materials like concrete, brick, or Cultured Stone.
Create retaining walls that follow the shape of your terrain.
Layout your deck, add stairs, place and arrange outdoor furniture.
Deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots.
Quickly add water features to your landscape with round and kidney shaped ponds and stream tools.
Automatic deck railings with height adjustments.

Outdoor Living

Use the Design Inspiration Center with a gallery of images to help plan your landscaping and outdoor living space.
Create custom landscaping plans in 2D and 3D.
Choose from a Library of more than 4,000 items.
Material Painter allows you to apply materials to individual items–change the color of your patio set, texture of your flooring, and more.
Fence Designer tools let you click-and-drag to follow the shape of your yard.
Design the exterior of your home or import a photo and add landscaping.

Site Planning & Estimating

Landscape design tools easily create hills and valleys for custom landscapes.
Use the Growth Slider tool to see what your plants will look like in 0-20 years.
Use powerful Fence, Garden, Driveway, Path, and Terrain Feature tools.
Create plot and perimeter plans; automatically generate a 3D model of your actual terrain.
Automatically generate a materials list to estimate costs.
Sprinkler Designer tool easily lays out sprinkler zones.

No Design Experience Needed!
Design it and enjoy it! Use over 3,000 integrated tools:

Create custom landscaping plans in 2D and 3D

Use over 3,000 integrated tools

Automatic Building Tools

Create automatic framing for decks
Automatically generate roofs, dimensions, foundations, stairs, railings and new floors
Automatically create a full 3D overview of your landscaping plans

Library Content

Over 4,000 items in the built-library including furniture, fixtures, lighting and more
Over 2,000 realistic plants
Brand names such as Benjamin Moore paints, Cultured Stone and more
Additional plants can be found in the Bonus Plant Library

Dimensions

One-Click automatic dimensions
Dynamic Dimensions–displays dimensions as walls or decks are drawn

Landscaping

Pre-Designed garden beds
Over 2,000 realistic plants
Import photos of your own plants
Plant Encyclopedia–for detailed plant descriptions
Plant Chooser to quickly locate and learn about plants
Plant Hardiness Zone maps
Advanced plant searching by sun, shade, watering, deer resistance and more
Grow your plants 0-20 years!

Terrain Tools

Automatic Terrain Perimeters–customize to define your specific plot
Add elevation points and elevation lines for custom contours
Create Terraces with retaining walls
One-Click hill and valley tools

Sprinkler Design

Sprinkler Design tools help you lay out sprinkler systems
Show sprinkler coverage areas
Adjust sprinkler coverage area
Choose from a library of sprinkler heads

Project Cost Estimating

Accurate materials calculations for concrete, lumber, plants and more
Automatic cost estimations and materials list
Assign costs for materials: descriptions, quantities, unit costs and more

Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer 7.0

The connection between skin cancer and excessive exposure to sun is well established. The reduction of these risks during pool activities for these and other skin-related ailments is aided by proper preparation. Plan to install enough shading during the summertime to ensure that guests are shielded from strong solar UV rays. In this article we talk about three types of shades.

Correspondingly, fall or winter use of the pool is dangerous because cold exposure can bring on opportunistic infections by weakening the immune system. To reduce these safety risks in connection to pool use, in the winter, one should add a heating system to keep the water temperature high enough to be usable. There are approximately two basic types of shades and three types of heaters we will describe below.

Turning to heating systems, the most common type by far is the gas-fired type. In an age where environmental and ecological awareness is highly prized, the consumer can be assured the gas-fired type is the most efficient. Requiring little lead time, it can be turned on only when the pool needs to be used. However, gas-fired heaters are pricey and have a short life-span.

The second type of heater is the electrical heat pump. A heat pump is basically a refrigerator in reverse. The electrical system compresses a refrigerant gas that causes the temperature to rise. This is then passed into the pool. The refrigerant is then moved to the exterior where its expansion causes cooling of the outside air. In this way heat is pumped from the air into the pool.

The last most widely used kind of heater is solar-based. They are also pricey due to the high costs of solar cells, but once installed they are cheap to maintain. Essentially they are an “off-grid” system that doesn’t rely on the utility company. The components that need to be installed include wires and heat piping, as well as a large number of solar panels necessary for adequate energy intake to fuel the system.

The most common kind of outdoor pool shade is the table umbrella. The design is basic, made up of a center supporting pole that holds the umbrella fabric. Variations on this theme are the side-arm umbrella, which adds an adjustable arm that can orient the overhead shade in different directions. A heavily weighted base holds the umbrella in place against strong winds.

The second type of pool shade is the portable pool cabana. This is like a canopy or tent that can be set up near the pool. It has natural or synthetic fabric walls as well as a ceiling. The advantage over umbrellas is added privacy and wind protection from the walls. The disadvantage is that cabanas are harder to set up and more difficult to maintain. They take up a lot more valuable space, making it hard to accommodate many guests.

The addition of shades and heaters means that one’s pool can be used in summer as well as winter. Shades have the additional benefit of protecting pool guests from skin-related health problems. Heaters make the pool usable in winter, but also more comfortable to use during the fall.

Come to our site on outdoor patio shades to discover the most up-to-date information. This and other topics on are available to all.

Garden landscaping is one of the most enjoyable home improvements anyone can make. Layering plants, rearranging existing flowers and shrubs and playing with color, texture and garden arrangement are fun and exciting techniques to give your home a well-deserved improvement. Here are some garden landscaping ideas to help you get started.

By layering your garden beds, you will can present a whole other level of interest to your landscaping design. Your yard, particularly the front area, is the first thing that people will see when they come to your house and giving a grand tour that includes a breathtaking garden is always fun and entertaining. You will be the talk of the neighborhood when you make use of good garden landscaping ideas.

Layering your garden landscaping design is not very difficult. You need to understand the flowers that you are going to plant first however. The choices that you select as far as the flowers and shrubs will affect just how your garden landscaping is designed. For example you do not want to have the larger plants in front of the little ones. This is obvious but you had better make a rough sketch of where you want things laid out in your landscaping before you begin. This will help you to keep things easy and assist you in avoiding larger problems with drainage, poor soil and incompatible color combinations. Your landscaping will go a lot smoother this way and you will run into less difficulties as you go.

When layering you should create about three layers. Your back row should face north, if possible, and the back row should have the tallest plants and as the rows descend so should the heights of the plants and flowers. Lay the medium and ground level plants in front of the larger ones. The trick of this kind of garden landscaping is that often the plants we buy are young plants. So you will need to talk to those working at your local gardening store approximately how large the plants will grow to be. This is essential to successful garden landscaping. If the front or midway section of your garden landscaping design is growing higher than the last row, then you will have to do some rearranging. Think about how you will water your layers so that your irrigation system makes it effortless for you to reach all your plantings. Layering plants needs a little training but the results are well worth the time you spend.

Layering plants will bring depth and make your foilage much more interesting to look at. Garden landscaping ideas as these will make your garden landscaping a success, increasing your property value and making your living space a more beautiful and appealing place to live.

For more info on landscaping, read the free articles at Landscape Now. If you’d like to know more about the relaxing sounds of water, check out Water Gardens and see just how easy it is to maintain an ecosystem within your landscaping. It’s easy to grow roses too! See Grow Roses Now for some very informative articles!

Most homeowners already have one or more Most homeowners already have one or more landscaping design ideas fixed firmly in their mind when they contact Exterior Worlds. They may have seen visited our landscaping design portfolio and seen the work we have done for other homeowners in neighborhoods like West University, Bellaire, River Oaks, and Tanglewood. They may have seen photographs of properties in a reputable publication that inspired certain landscape design ideas based on several motifs that caught their eye, or they may be have had a passion for a certain cultural style such as French, Italian, or Japanese that they have always wanted to develop on their own personal homestead.

Regardless of the origin of such inspiration, it is important that you work with a Houston Landscaping Service that can help you more fully develop your landscaping design ideas in a manner that compliments the appearance of your home and helps extend its living space outdoors in a way that fully expresses the core values and subjective sentiments of your own personal lifestyle.

Make your landscape a virtual, organic extension of your home’s structure and aesthetic.

When you meet with your landscaping architect for the first time, try to develop landscaping design ideas that will compliment the architecture of your house. No matter how small or large your home actually is, it represents the most dominant feature of your landscape, and as such, cannot be ignored. Any outdoor structures such as an arbor, fire pit, outdoor kitchen, patio fireplace, or special walkway needs to reflect the basic design principles that distinguish your house from surrounding structures.

The swimming pool in particular is something you should pay very close attention to. Most swimming pool construction that is done independently from a landscaping plan tends to focus only on making the pool itself functional and aesthetically pleasing. We see this all the time when we work on older homes that were build in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The pool looks fantastic in and of itself, but it clashes severely with surrounding terrain and home architectural features. We commonly have to remodel swimming pools significantly, or rebuild them all together, to harmonize the poll with the surrounding landscape.

Garden design is another area that you should really rely upon professional expertise to help develop. While you may already have dozens of landscaping design ideas in mind about what types of flowers, shrubs, and trees will look best in your yard, please keep in mind that vegetation groupings constitute forms in and of themselves that either work with or against the appearance of your house. A good example would be some of the contemporary landscapes we have done in our landscaping portfolio section which required us to plant some very unique vegetation patterns to truly do justice to the unique elements that constituted a particular home’s appearance.

Think form follows function when developing a landscaping plan.

The best landscaping design ideas will develop forms around practical use of open areas. After all, the more beautiful your landscape, the more you are going to want to go outside and experience it firsthand. Activities will naturally follow, so coming up with a clear picture of what you intend to ultimately do when you are outdoors will help you more fully develop a plan for development of key areas of your yard. If your ultimate goal is to create entertainment space, then outdoor structures and special environments will need to be built that support the many activities that you and your guests particularly enjoy. If you have children, and you are looking to create special play areas and sports facilities, Houston professional landscapers can help you by subcontracting specialists who can design these facilities (such as courts and practice fields) safely and effectively while still remaining ultimately true to the overall landscaping design idea envisioned in the master plan.

Ornament the landscape to create special space in addition to simply decorating it.

Even something that normally conveys a purely artistic sentiment can play a functional role in the development of your landscaping design idea. Your Houston landscaping company can help develop special patio and seating areas that are aside just for you. Here, you can reflect, meditate, read the paper, and enjoy the morning over conversation and coffee. Fountains and sculptures, though typically categorized as purely decorative, can take on a new, more subtle role as boundary markers between public space, children space, and special, private space. Landscape lighting can then be installed around these areas to maintain these boundaries during the night as well as the day. In this sense, one single landscape can be turned into many smaller landscapes; each represented by its own unique features, forms, purposes, and carefully designed ideas.

fixed firmly in their mind when they contact Exterior Worlds. They may have seen visited our landscaping design portfolio and seen the work we have done for other homeowners in neighborhoods like West University, Bellaire, River Oaks, and Tanglewood. They may have seen photographs of properties in a reputable publication that inspired certain landscape design ideas based on several motifs that caught their eye, or they may be have had a passion for a certain cultural style such as French, Italian, or Japanese that they have always wanted to develop on their own personal homestead.