The plant chooser is a powerful feature to help find,
learn about and choose the ideal plants for your landscaping projects.
To access the plant chooser, click the plant tools,
drop down and select plant chooser,
or click the plant chooser button at the bottom of the library browser.
This will open the plant chooser dialog clicking on the search button at the
bottom of the dialog without having entered any search criteria means
every plant in the library will be listed in the search results.
To search for a plant by name,
enter its name in the appropriate field and click the search button.
For this example, enter Iris, click search.
The search results will display on the right side.
The results can be viewed in common or scientific name by placing a
mark next to the desired option at the top of the search results.
Keep the library browser open to get a preview of the selected plant.
To place a plant from the results,
click on its name and click close,
then click in the floor plan view to place it.
Fill an entire garden bed with the selected plant.
Garden beds can be placed by clicking on terrain, then garden bed.
Choose a garden bed shape, then click and drag to place it in the plan.
Once placed,
adjustments can be made to modify the shape by using the drag handles and break
tool.
Follow the steps to select a plant,
then click inside the garden bed to quickly fill it.
For a natural look, open the garden bed specification dialog.
Under, the distributed plant tab, adjust the spacing,
distribution, orientation, scaling, and more.
Click OK to lock in the changes.
To customize a plant, select it and click open.
3d plants will open to the plant specification dialog.
Here adjustments can be made to the size of the plant and its placement.
Plant images will open to the plant image specification dialog.
Inside the plant image specification dialog find additional
information about the selected plant like standard heights,
sun water, and soil requirements and hardiness zones.
Click the view map button to take a closer look at this information. Here,
the region where the plant is located to determine if the selected plant will
thrive there. In Home Designer Pro and Architectural,
many of the plants in the library have maturity information.
You can use this information to visualize the growth of your plants over time.
Begin by placing young trees and shrubs.
Then use the grow plants tool to adjust the maturity.
This can be helpful for determining spacing and quantities needed for a given
area. Use the plant chooser or library browser to find plants.
For this example, let's determine spacing for a row of Boxwoods.
First place a Boxwood in the floor plan view.
Set the current plant size by opening the specification dialog.
Set the plants height to 12 inches. This is its current height, press tab.
Notice the width adjusts accordingly because retain aspect ratio is
checked. This keeps the plant size uniform.
Once all of the plants have been placed in the plan at their current sizes,
take a 3d view. To see what the plants will look like. In three years,
click on terrain in the upper toolbar,
then plant and select grow all plants.
Move the slider to the desired number of months and click OK.
All plants with maturity information will update to reflect the growth that has
occurred over the course of three years. Spacing appears adequate.
So there won't be overcrowding as the plants mature.
Now that the plants are approved and placed in the plan,
create a plant schedule, click on the plant tools in the upper toolbar,
then select plant schedule. Click on the plan view to place the schedule.
The schedule can be edited to include all desired information.
Simply select titles of information from the available columns and click add.
To remove unwanted information from the schedule,
select those items from columns to include and press the remove
button.
It is also possible to arrange the columns however is most convenient.
Select the title from the columns to include section and move them up
or down click OK,
and the selected information will be included in the schedule.
For more information,
see the built-in help menu and our support articles available on the website.