What can I use to redesign my garden?

QCan you recommend a tool to help plan my garden makeover? Nothing too dramatic – just moving a few borders and vegetable plots around. I’d rather not use a phone app as I find them too fiddly. Kevin Broadhurst

AAlthough intended as an interior-design tool, Sweet Home 3D ( www.snipca.com/34795) can be used to plan your new garden. And unlike most landscaping software, it’s free. It doesn’t have specific garden-related tools, but you can recreate your garden by first setting up a new room (press Ctrl+shift+r) to match the size of your garden, then giving it a soil texture (right-click the room, ‘Modify rooms…’, then Texture - see screenshot). Next, create another room on top of this to match the grass sections of your garden and give it a suitable texture. You can import extra free textures (including different types of grass and soil) from www.snipca.com/34796. Once you’ve recreated your garden, you can move the borders as required and even take a virtual stroll around it (press Ctrl+shift+d).

While Sweet Home 3D is great for creating an accurate representation of your garden, it does take a while to get the hang of. If accuracy isn’t so important, give the excellent Vegplotter a go ( www.snipca.com/34797). It’s an online service, so runs from within your browser, and is free - you just need to create an account. You can recreate your existing garden, then move borders around to see how they look. As its name suggests, Vegplotter is primarily designed for planning vegetable plots. You can add as many plots as you like to your garden, then drag a variety of vegetables into them so you’ll never forget what you’ve planted where. It also works as a planner, letting you set reminders for when you need to plant, tend to, and harvest your veg. And if you set your location when creating an account, Vegplotter will even advise you when to plant certain veg depending on your climate.

Do you need our advice on what software to use? Just email us at letters@computeractive.co.uk