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  Mike Bradley February 26, 2018 at 9:18am

  Start with Sketchup Free. Threads on this site for Sketchup; also lots of tutorials on YouTube.
• PRO

  Phil Voice February 26, 2018 at 9:57am

   As Mike says, there are a number of Skectchup threads on here: https://landscapejuicenetwork.com/main/search/search?q=sketchup

  Use search to refine what you're looking for.

  

  Search Results - sketchup

  The UK's Number one landscaping and garden forum for professionals
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  Lee Davis February 26, 2018 at 4:49pm

  Thanks guys
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  Jon Ward February 28, 2018 at 8:13pm

  I do design drawings by hand including a watercolour painting on art paper. I have found that makes me stand out from the others. But I studied art before I studied gardening!
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    Rachel Mathews SGD > Jon Ward March 2, 2018 at 8:23am

    I do the same as Jon - people love hand drawn plans. Plus there is a HUGE learning curve with Sketchup!
    
    I'm sure if you search YouTube you'll find video tutorials on how to drawn landscape plans.

     
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      Mike Bradley > Rachel Mathews SGD March 2, 2018 at 7:41pm

      Having done hand drawn and Sketchup plans over the years, there is no way I would revert to pen and paper.

      I must also disagree about the learning curve. Sketchup is simple, straightforward, accurate and intuitive. Basic designs can be exported as pdfs and quickly amended or tweaked to give options - to accommodate various budget levels for example; areas can also be taken directly from the drawings to assist with pricing. Also 'styles' within Sketchup can give effects such as the above.
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  Lee Davis March 2, 2018 at 7:59pm

  If I could do a decent job by hand I would I think. I’ll have a look at sketch up over the weekend cos I’m not sure my art skills are quite there!
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  Rebecca Wallman March 4, 2018 at 9:52am

  Hi Lee,

   I’ve just moved over to SketchUp after hand drawing for a few years. I did a couple of days training with a professional but you will need time to get to grips with it. It really depends on how detailed you want things but there are lots of online tutorials. The main advantage for me is enabling the client to see the concept in 3D. It would take me hours to do lots of perspective drawings but it is so easy in SketchUp to zoom around the model and export 2d images. It is also so much easier to make changes for the final plan without having to redraw the whole thing. Hand drawing is lovely but I had a few clients asking me if I used CAD and everyone is responding very well to the CAD images and plans.

  Good luck!

  Rebecca
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  Tracy Rich March 5, 2018 at 2:17pm

  I use Vectorworks but, although it's really precise with lots of functionality, it's expensive. Like others have mentioned, I'd recommend trying the free SketchUp first. We were taught hand drawing, SketchUp and Vectorworks in college so we had experience in all of them.

  Some designers like Tom Stuart-Smith do extremely beautiful hand drawings. I wish I had the time and skills for this! See http://www.tomstuartsmith.co.uk/projects/work-in-progress

  Work in progress | Tom Stuart-Smith
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  Geoffrey King March 10, 2018 at 8:52pm

  Hi Lee,  Here's something to bear in mind.  My partner, currently does hand drawn plans, on typically A2 or A1 size paper, we keep the  original, so we need to get a copy.  The ONLY place that does 'plan' scanning and printing is in York 30 miles away.

  Now if were using CAD variants, we could email them and they would deliver to us.

  So, if you ever think about printing, think about, where?

  Oh and I've been looking at GardenCAD recently, quite promising, loads of YouTube tutorials