E-review: FLOWERscape, a flower garden design program
Karen Fletcher
The following is a text-only version of an Illustrated E-Review
of the flower garden design program FLOWERscape. The illustrated
version, complete with screen capture graphics, is available via
WWW from The Garden Gate on Prairienet:
http://www.prairienet.org/ag/garden/homepage.htm
Garden Gate's E-reviews will offer regular reviews of gardening
software and books. Text-only versions will be posted to rec.gardens
and pnet.community.gardens.
I welcome all feedback, comments, _contributions_ (of reviews), and
suggestions for future reviews.
Karen Fletcher
Garden Gatekeeper The Garden Gate on Prairienet
flet...@prairienet.org
_____________________Copyright @1994 Karen Fletcher__________________________
E-Review: FLOWERscape Garden Design Software
The flower garden design program FLOWERscape by Voudette
sounded too good to pass up ($50 from PC Connection) and
seemed like just the thing to brighten a rainy day.
FLOWERscape is available for both Windows and for the Mac.
The Windows version is reviewed here.
In many ways, FLOWERscape is the flower garden design
program we've all designed in our heads - high-quality
flower images to select and plant; selection of plants
according to climate, soil, and light conditions; month-by-
month display as flowers come into bloom and then subside.
Even at 640x480 SVGA resolution, 256 colors fool
the eye into seeing a pleasing approximation of the real
thing and the color photographs are surprisingly attractive.
FLOWERscape requires MS Windows 3.1 running a 256-color SVGA
driver and at least 8MB of hard disk space.
Getting Started
When you first load the program, you can choose
your state, town and soil Ph. You have the option of
setting this as the default. Next, you can choose your
background, various house walls and fences, all displayed
against a green velvet golf course lawn.
The toolbox consists of a pointer, a book icon for the plant
index, a digging tool, and an eraser for removing plants (we
might relate better to the more familiar gopher or
neighbor's dog....)
With the little digging tool you can dig your bed in a
rectangular, oval or custom shape. Its size is displayed
as you dig. From the color of the soil, it looks like
it won't need amending.
Depending on your screen's resolution, you will see more
or less of the full 40 x 14 foot area without scrolling.
A zoom in/out button lets you get an overview of your garden.
Selecting Plants
The plant index offers you a mix of annuals, bulbs,
perennials, and a few shrubs to choose from. You can screen
by flower color, type, height, flower size, flowering
period, and sun exposure. Additional filters let you select
for long-blooming, drought-resistant, fragrant, and scented
flowers.
You can choose to list plants by common or botanical names.
As you scroll down the list, a thumbnail of the flower appears.
When you select a plant, a picture of the flower is placed
in the plant strip on top, along with color bullets
representing different color varieties.
Closeup and Plant Information Windows
A closeup of each selection can be displayed. An optional
information window for each plant gives you a close-up of
the flower along with height, flower size, hardiness zone, etc.
Planting your Bed
To start planting, just drag and drop from the plant strip
to the bed. Full frontal photographs of the plant in flower
are neatly arranged one behind the other as you plant,
alternately in mirror images for a little variety. The plant index
also includes some other landscape features so you can place
generic rocks, trees, and shrubs in various sizes in and
around the bed.
Through the Seasons
Once you've planted your garden, the season menu lets you
see what's blooming in any particular month. Plants don't
actually grow, but are represented by green dots when
planted but not emerged, green lumps or faded foliage when not in
bloom (my favorite: daffodils in June) and gray dots when dead and
gone.
There is an 'All bloom' option to let you see everything in
bloom simultaneously, something bound to cheer up the
gardener in winter. The flowering periods do seem somewhat
optimistic for many plants, certainly for here in the
Midwest, so these monthly snapshots may be painting too rosy
a picture, as it were.
Printing and Saving
You can print a planting plan of your garden which shows a
diagram with numbers representing the plants keyed to a list
below. You can also print a picture of the garden. I printed
to a Tektronix color printer and the results were quite
satisfactory.
The garden summary option prints out a useful chart
showing quantities planted along with flowering period,
planting time, and color.
Gardens are saved as GDN files, each taking up about 440K.
Gardens are saved along with plant strip selections, so
you can - as every gardener must - go back to your garden and
fiddle endlessly, plucking and planting and rearranging.
Gardens can also be saved as BMP files and cropped or modified
with any paint program that supports 256 colors.
Plant Selection
FLOWERscape's developer has obviously tried to provide a
representative variety of plants for the entire United
States, but what is available in this version is very
much a local garden center selection. If your flower
gardening fantasies stretch even to some of the less
encyclopedic perennial nursery catalogs, you are likely
to be a bit disappointed.
As far as I can tell, FLOWERscape offers about 150 plants.
Here in Zone 5, the selection drops to around 100.
But many of the plants come in several color varieties, each
with its own picture. The program takes up 8 MB of disk
space as it is, but I would happily give up more disk space
or crank up the CD ROM for Monarda and Veronica and some
ferns and Alchemilla (of course the list goes on and on). I
understand that an expanded plant library will be available
with the next upgrade (free to registered owners).
Minor Problems
The interface is irritating in some minor ways. Each time
you choose a flower from the list and it is placed in the
planting strip, the plant index window closes. If you are
choosing a number of flowers, you have to reopen the window
for each one.
It's a little hard to figure out exactly what one's point of
view is when looking at the bed. As far as I can tell, I'm
looking down from a second-story window from about 30 feet
away. It's hard to keep a perspective. An optional 6" grid
overlay for more precise spacing would help. I found I
tended to overplant just simulate mature plantings.
Although you get to choose whether to list plants
alphabetically by their common or botanical name, most
'botanical' names consist of only the genus name
without a specific epithet. This is not BC (botanically
correct).
Potential Incompatibilities
FLOWERscape would occasionally hang, but once I disabled
my screensaver, it behaved. Running it with the generic
Microsoft SVGA 800x600 256 driver (large font) causes it
to truncate words in many of its windows. On a Dell 486/66,
the scrolling menu windows failed to scroll properly, and
screen images occasionally became corrupted.
User Documentation
The FLOWERscape user guide is simply a big four-fold card.
It doesn't need much more than that, since for any
experienced Windows user this program practically runs
itself. The company offers a fax hotline to registered
users and ready response to questions.
All in All
Minor problems aside, FLOWERscape is a worthwhile program and I
think it is headed in the right direction. It is pretty to
look at, easy and enjoyable to use, and the price is right.
And it's terrific fun to doodle with. With an expanded flower
library, I think FLOWERscape has the potential to be a widely
popular among gardeners.
======================================================================
DISCLAIMER:
This review was written on a rainy day for lack
of any garden work to do and is provided strictly
for the edification and amusement of fellow gardeners.
The author is not associated with the software
publisher, nor do her views represent the views of
Prairienet which would surely disavow all knowledge of her
actions should she be captured or killed.
======================================================================
Karen Fletcher
Garden Gatekeeper
The Garden Gate on Prairienet
flet...@prairienet.org
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Karen Fletcher flet...@prairienet.org
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