For the gardener, one massive benefit of the computer age is the ability to plan and order your whole garden from your desktop?

The web and gardening software makes it easy to get exactly what you like for your garden by logging on and choosing your hard and soft landscaping, and plants according to colour, size, type, season and more.

You can even select plants according to the conditions they will be planted in your garden, so if you have a shaded area you will be able to select only those plants that prefer those conditions. Most online retailers have search facilities which make this very easy to do, even if you are a beginner.It makes it easy for an inexperienced gardener to plan a garden and know what it will look like and know that the right plants and in the best place according to the conditions.

The saving that you can get over hiring professional advice can go in to the purchase of plants and garden necessities. There may still be occasions when you want to take professional advice, if the project is too big to visualise or technical landscaping advice is required.

It can be great fun creating your own garden and choosing the plants to suit your personality. You can chop and change the plan around until you get the best layout without ever having to spend money until you are completely happy and ready to go with the ordering of the plants.

As well as the convenience of these search functions on the gardening sites, you will often find that due to the lower overheads of the online businesses, you can save quite a substantial lot of money by buying through them rather than the local garden store.

One of the best ways to get ideas for your garden plans is to look at the galleries of other gardens on the web and base your own garden on those that you like, adapting it to suit your garden size and shape and personal preferences.

Once you have created a plan using these resources you can take it to a landscaping professional to get some additional guidance and advice but in doing the groundwork online first you will save a lot of money. It’s also worth considering specific gardening software which allows you to create a complete plan including hard and soft landscaping, planting schedules and view how your garden will look as it develops. You may want to try Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping & Deck Designer 7 (PC) which has recently been released.

Some of my favourite suppliers are:

Gardening Express

Crocus

Suttons Seeds

Dobies

Rolawn