Landscape with decks, fences, pathways, lawns, and gardens complete with irrigation. IMSI/Design offers a free 15-day trial landscape software download so you can begin to transform your entire landscape design process with state of the art real time 3D landscape design software. Choose Your Free Landscape Software. Anybody know of a decent, affordable, design software package for irrigation?
The development of landscaping software makes it virtually easy to create landscaping projects at home or anywhere. These tools are made to organize design features with the possibility of viewing the completed projects at any time. Most landscape design software offers users with flexibility and dynamism with ease of use. Other advantages affords the user the ability to choose the ideal plants, and experimenting and moving around the design elements during the grueling process of landscape planning. These can be done without having to spend money or engaging in manual work. These landscape design programs are usually created with beginners in mind. These are user-friendly and easy to learn. With these programs, it is possible that you can oversee your landscape start from scratch up to the mature and fully developed plan. There are many landscaping programs that are developed to help you consider nature such as the one for irrigation planning. Other programs offer you the features of planning for fencing, pools, decks, gazebos and many more. Below are some of affordable or free landscaping software that you can try and use for your designing ideas.
10. 3D Landscape for Everyone
The 3D Landscape for Everyone is a free landscaping software, which provides users with the basic tools in landscape design; however, this is not the program for people who simply want to take pictures and then use the photo to design the landscape. Nevertheless, this program can provide simple and basic three-dimensional imaging manipulation and modification. Regarding the results of using this program, do not expect a realistic or very impressive image.
9. 3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite
If you can spend some money, you can try the 3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite. This paid program is very affordable and worth it for the features and functionality. The 3D Home Architect Home & Landscape Deluxe Suite has a user-friendly interface. Even beginners will have an easy time navigating and creating designs using this program. The basic landscaping features are included in this program. However, for advanced users, there are other software that can do the job better than this one.
8. Imagine Pro
The Imagine Pro landscaping program is another software recommended by some landscape designers. It is necessary for users of this program to listen to the tutorials in order to get the hang of using this program. You can also do some experimentation using this program. The downside of using this is that it is not capability of creating 3D models. However, the 2D result (the photos and images) gives impressive, realistic and precise and accurate preview of the landscape design.
7. IMSI TurboFLOORPLAN Landscape & Deck
This TurboFLOORPLAN Landscape & Deck from IMSI is a powerful program with great potential for the users. The features and functionalities included in this software can get the job done. However, this one requires users to have a high end and powerful personal computer. This program is also good for those who prefer no superfluities in their approach to landscape designing.
6. Total 3D Home, Landscape & Deck
The Total 3D Home, Landscape & Deck is an impressive landscaping software sold at an affordable price. One of the main strong points of this program is its effectiveness in designing landscapes as well as home. A thorough study of this program is required before you can grasp and harness its full potential. Another thing, this program is specific in terms of what and what not to allow during the design and drawing.
5. HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite
The HGTV Home & Landscape Platinum Suite is one of the outstanding selections for those looking for landscape design software. HGTV is known for home renovations including landscaping and it is not surprising if they come up with their own software. The program contains the essential landscaping tools as well as other functionalities for building, re-modeling or in re-thinking of the design ideas. This program provides fast, effective and efficient work.
4. Landscaping & Deck Designer
The Landscaping & Deck Designer is another landscape designing program designed for the average home user. This program is also intended for the professional in the landscaping field. This program can help landscapers to provide their customers with visual and digital ideas through the videos showing aerial and walkthrough views. The interface of the program is very user-friendly making it possible even for beginners to create and put his/her ideas into motion.
3. Home & Landscape Design
The Home & Landscape Design is an excellent software providing users with essential landscape design tools. This flexible, dynamic and powerful tool is affordable and gives you landscaping features plus home design functionalities. The user will have an easy time understanding the interface and workflow of this program because it also features organization in work.
2. Landscape Deck & Patio Designer
The Landscape Deck & Patio Designer is a program that is clearly developed for beginners and average home users. Still, with tons of features and functions, this program is also suitable for professionals to use. Aside from several features and designing tools, this program will help you to create your landscape ideas easily, relatively fast and with few or even without any hassles.
1. Realtime Landscaping PLUS
The Realtime Landscaping PLUS is the best landscaping software around. It provides users with lots of landscaping features that any ordinary and home users may not even use at all. Nevertheless, this program is a great tool for the professional and the novice landscaper in putting their ideas into motion. The interface of this program gives users almost everything that is needed in landscape designing. It also provides a realistic and very impressive output.
Using landscape planning software on your Mac can save you a fortune compared to the cost of hiring a professional landscape designer.
It’s estimated the average landscape project costs around $2,651 although this can easily rise to almost 5 times more depending on the size and details of your project.
The do-it-yourself route also puts you in a full control and nowadays there are some superb such as SmartDraw that are far easier and cheaper than complex CAD software for Mac.
And although there’s some excellent home design software for Mac, many of them don’t have the specific tools needed to do landscaping properly.
Incredibly easy to use tools such as SmartDraw allow your imagination to run wild whether its flagstone patios, swimming pools, a vegetable patch or exotic flowers you fantasize about in your garden or outdoor space.
All the apps featured here work on Mac and some of the Cloud options on Windows too so this article will also be of interest to PC users. They’re all suitable for landscaping use worldwide including the US, Europe, Canada and Australia.
Tips On Choosing Landscape Design Software
Before diving in, there are a few questions you may want to consider to help choose the right program for you. Here’s a selection of some important things to think about.
- Do you want a 2D or 3D landscaping tool?
- Do you want to be able to upload a photo of your home or garden?
- Do you need costing features built-in?
- Do you need the software to pull GPS coordinates for contractors to view?
- Do you want to be able to do 3D walk-throughs of your finished designs?
- Do you need a sprinkler system layout planner built-in?
- Does the app have a detailed database of plants, shrubs and other garden related objects?
- Are there plenty of quick start templates to customize and help get things done quickly?
- Can the software project how changes in seasons, sunlight and shadows will affect your design?
- Can the app show you how plant growth will look years down the line?
- Do you need to be able to easily share your yard plans with others?
- Do you need home design and landscape design rolled into one?
Apart from considering these points, we also strongly recommend doing the following before getting started in any planning project.
- Measure your yard – also known as creating a base map or landscape map. You may be able to find one of these already done in the property deeds or original architectural plans for the property.
- Check any local rules, by-laws and regulations on private property planning and development before doing anything. Some regions have strict laws on what owners can and can’t do to their property environs.
- Consider the climate of your region to make appropriate decisions about plants, shrubs, position of the sun at different times of the year, shadow etc.
Finally, it’s worth remembering that no landscape software can replace the skills and experience of a professional landscaper. Like any type of design, landscaping is an art with rules and design principles all of its own.
With all this in mind then, here’s then is our list of the best landscape design tools for Mac of 2019 to design backyards, patios, decks and more.
1. SmartDraw
If you’re looking for an all purpose diagramming tool that makes things easy and goes beyond just landscape design, then you can’t get better than SmartDraw.
SmartDraw is by far the fastest and easiest landscape design tool you’ll find for Mac. SmartDraw is a professional but accessible diagram software that has thousands of quick-start templates including many for landscape design.
The great thing is that much of the hard work is done for you as all you need to do is customize one of the scaled templates that most closely matches your setup.
The choice of templates is by far the best we’ve seen in any landscaping app including layouts for patios, pools, decks and floor plans providing lots of inspiration.
SmartDraw is also suitable for professional landscape design as it has site plan templates for both commercial and residential planning.
There are thousands of symbols and shapes for both landscapes and backyards including the possibility to drag and drop flowers, grasses, sprinkler systems and brick patterns.
Note however that you can’t add images and you can’t account for different elevations in SmartDraw.
Once done with the blueprint, you can export to almost any format (Office, PDF, SVG, JPEG, PNG) at almost any print size needed. You can also simply send a link to anyone you want to share your designs with.
Since it’s entirely Cloud based, you can easily collaborate with family or colleagues online and you can use it on any device including iPad, iPhone, Android and PC.
For professionals, SmartDraw is also integrated with Atlassian’s Confluence, Jira and Trello for use in corporate environments or in the field.
For DIY or professional landscape planning, SmartDraw is powerful yet amazingly accessible.
SmartDraw Cloud costs $5.95 per month for teams of 5 or more and $9.95 per month for individuals.
You can get started landscape designing now for free with SmartDraw to try it for yourself.
You can also read more in our full SmartDraw review for Mac & PC.
2. GardenPuzzle
If you want a Mac desktop app that allows you to use a real photo of your house or garden in, then GardenPuzzle might be for you. GardenPuzzle is an easy to use landscape design tool that works on and offline and allows you to easily drag and drop plants, structures, paths, lawns, water elements and more.
If you don’t want to use your own photo, you can upload a sample from the library and then you simply choose plants based on filters such as size, climate zone, how much light they need and species.
There’s 800 plants to choose from and you can easily drag them around until you find the right fit. You can even simulate how the plants will look during different seasons.
If you need herbs and vegetables, you can also purchase additional packs for a few dollars.
If you want something that’s focused on plants and shrubs and works both on desktop and online, GardenPuzzle is a simple to use, well designed tool.
3. Home Designer Suite
Home Designer Suite is a collection of DIY architect tools by Chief Architect designed for both interior and exterior design. If you want something that models your landscapes in 3D, then it’s an excellent option for bringing decks and patios to life.
You can import photos of your own property or yard and there’s an ample choice of 3,600 plants with detailed botanical information including Hardiness Zone maps.
There are specific tools for terrain planning with the ability to account for elevation, contours and show lot setback requirements to neighbors or professional landscape designers. One of the stand out features of Home Designer Suite is the Outdoor Kitchen Designer which allows you to choose from name brand appliances and furnishings.
4. TurboFloorPlan Home & Landscape Pro
TurboFloorPlan Home & Landscape Pro is a powerful desktop landscape designer for both Mac & PC. However, it’s aimed at DIY home enthusiasts and has an easy learning curve.
There’s a limited amount of templates to get you started and TurboFloorPlan Home & Landscape Pro can automatically follow the contours and shape of your house as you draw. We also like the way you can zone plants together and then move them around collectively. There’s also a clever Topo Designer which adds real world topography to your designs and automatically adds or removed building pad.
There’s a huge choice of materials including mulch, pavers, paths and flower gardens. There’s a good choice of plants and if it’s not in the directory, you can import it too.
You can also build retaining walls, import photos or backgrounds and simulate how your plants will look in years to come.
The only thing we don’t like is the Mac has clearly just been ported straight from Windows inspired. The interface looks and feels Windows-based and the Windows product is more updated than the Mac version. The current Windows version is for 2019 but Mac users still have to use the 2017 version.
5. Garden Planner
If you want something really simple just for redesigning your garden, try Garden Planner.
Garden Planner is the most dated of the apps featured here but it’s ideal for basic sketching of ideas. You can do 3D walkthroughs of your designs.
You can use the web version of Garden Planner for free although it’s useless if you want to save anything as it forces you to download and pay for the desktop app.
6. Punch Landscape Design
No review of landscape designing software would be complete without mentioning Punch Landscape Design. Punch Landscape Design is one of the most popular landscape design apps on Windows and it also works on Mac. However, we’re not big fans of it because it requires you to build a house first before you can actually do any landscape designing.
If you just want to re-design your garden, or want to mould a landscape without any property on it, this isn’t very useful. And even when you’ve done that, it only provides generic names for plants and shrubs and lacks the detail of the other garden planners featured here.
If you want to design both a house and garden and want something cross-platform, Punch Landscape Design might be for you but we think there are far better options available to Mac users.
7. Landscapers Companion
Finally, it’s worth mentioning Landscapers Companion. While it’s not an actual landscape design tool, it’s a remarkably detailed plant inventory app of over 26,000 plants with detailed information on all of them. If you’re specifically interested in plants and shrubs, it’s an incredibly interesting tool and makes a great complementary app to any landscaping software. Landscapers Companion works online but there’s also a Mac desktop app and both allow you to make lists or wish lists of plants for your redesigns.
Free Garden Planning Software For Mac
There are a few online open source or free garden design apps out there but they’re limited in features and only suitable for basic garden sketches.
Here’s a selection of the best ones.
Gardena Garden Planner
Gardena Garden Planner is probably the best free landscape design software for Mac with a surprisingly slick and well designed interface. It looks good, it’s easy to use with lots of useful tips and there are some useful standard templates to get you up and running.
If you’re planning to add a sprinkler system to your garden, Gardena Garden Planner also has a useful specialized irrigation system layout planner.
Note that you can only save your plans if you create a Gardena account and log in first though.
Plan-a-Garden
The Better Homes & Garden website offers the free online Plan-a-Garden app which allows you to sketch out flowerbeds and landscape plans. Plan-a-Garden includes a library of trees, shrubs, and structures, and can be arranged on a computer screen, then saved for future reference or printed out.
VegetableGarden
VegetableGarden is about the only open source garden planner out there although as the name suggests, it’s a vegetable garden design software only for vegetable patches. However, it’s free to use although you need to create an account to use it.
Garden Visualizer
Garden Visualizer is a Cloud based free landscape planner which allows you to create 3D designs. You can upload photos of your house or garden and add common elements like paving, block paving, walling, edging and plants. You can also create your own bespoke step features, garden walls with pillars and garden paths. Unfortunately Garden Visualizer requires the Unity Plugin which is no longer being developed but you can still download the old version for Mac.
Is There A Google Landscaping App?
There isn’t a specific landscape design tool make by Google but there is SketchUp which is owned by Google. Sketchup has an extensive warehouse of images and particularly useful for landscape designers is the extensive library of native plants. There’s a free version for personal use although professional landscape designers must use the pro version if you’re designing for clients.
Is VizTerra For Mac Available?
Unfortunately the popular Windows-based 3D Landscape Design tool VizTerra does not work on Mac as Macs do not support DirectX 11 3D applications. There’s also no way to run VizTerra on Mac using virtualization software or any other tools to run Windows on Mac.
Running Windows Landscape Tools On Mac
If you want to run a PC only landscaping software on your Mac, your only option is to run Windows on your Mac. Virtualization tools like Parallels allow you to run macOS and Windows at the same time although it puts a lot of strain on your Mac and it’s better to use one of the solutions featured here. For more on this, check out our guide on the best ways to run Windows on macOS.
We hope this article has helped you on your way to designing your dream landscape or garden plot. If you have any questions, problems or suggestions regarding the tools featured here, let us know in the comments below.
Rain Bird Sprinkler Design Software
If you’re interested in redesigning your home too, you may also be interested in our look at the best interior design tools for Mac too.