Garden Planner

Despite a few omissions, this program still stands as a handy tool for anyone who plans a garden or landscape from the ground up. The bright, welcoming interface is a snap to understand, and, though you won't find a step-by-step wizard, the animated introduction quickly brings you up to speed.

Operating the program is equally painless. You simply drag and drop shrubs, trees, flowers, buildings, paving, and ponds into a large grid and lay them out as you like. You can change the foliage color and zoom in or out on your garden. However, we wish the program included several templates for houses so you could spatially arrange the garden around it. We also would like the developer to give us a few sample garden layouts.

Still, we think Garden Planner can be useful for a number of folks, whether they're new home owners, landscape architects, or just gardening enthusiasts.