Why I buy this one ?
- Choose from a library of more than 4,000 items for your designs, including over 1,200 plants
- Plant Hardiness Zone reference maps helps you choose the most appropriate plants, and a
- Plant Chooser feature helps you search for plants based on climate, drought tolerance, deer resistance, and much more
- Layout sprinkler zones quickly and efficiently
- Design single or multi-level decks with Deck Designer

What our customer's say!

"Talk about frustrating", I haven't spent too much time reading the reviews for this product, but judging by the amount of "1" stars, I can tell that I'm not the only one who is fed up with this software after many, many tries to design a simple landscape.

The first day I got this software, I built the house, painted the walls green, and aside from a struggle to get the roof to look like my house's roof, it went okay, so I was still optimistic.

The next day, I anxiously sat down and started to lay out the perimeter of my yard, and after another struggle to get the curve in the road for my front border, I was a little frustrated, but it turned out okay. Then after trying to get a gentle slope down from the house and managing to create big mountains in the yard, I learned how to use the undo button...over and over. I tried to design a deck in the back, and the act of doing that changed the color of the house back to a drab gray color. So I changed it back to green, and decided to erase the deck and try for a different design. And my house was gray again. Aarrrgghh!!!

Did I mention that my garage door appeared a foot above the driveway? I don't own a Hummer, so I tried to lower the door (can't do it) then raise the driveway (more mountains). All I got was more practice with the undo button.

Okay, I gave up on the deck and the garage door for the time being, and decided to try to create some raised areas where I thought some decorative rock and some bushy things and maybe a tree would look good. Well, the terrain feature tools only allow a kidney bean shape, a rectangle, or a circle. These can be modified by selecting the object (which is a major chore in itself - first you have to right click on it, then select object. But by now, the "floorplan" view looks like a mangled mess of lines, because it shows all the elevation lines, some dimension lines of the house, fence, plot lines, sidewalk, road, camera angle lines, and I haven't even planted any trees or bushes yet - so every time you try to click on something to modify, you stand a GREAT chance of clicking on something nearby. AND if you forget that you need to right click first, you will have a new terrain feature where you just clicked...undo button) Where was I? Oh yeah, the shapes of the rocky areas - I wanted to create a curvy line to run along the sides of my driveway, and these three shapes don't allow that. Undo button. So they have this tool for creating a landscape curb, and although I didn't want a curb, I assumed I could use that to frame what I wanted so as have an area to plant bushes. Sigh...You can't just draw a curvy line. There is a "spline curb" tool, which supposedly makes curves by clicking and dragging straight sections of curb that will attach themselves end to end to each other after they're drawn. Finally, I figured how to create a beautiful curvy border for my rocky area. Problem solved, right? Wrong. It doesn't work. I ended up with a bunch of parking blocks in my lawn. Forget the undo button. I give up. Trust me, you will too.

The tutorial videos are indeed short, and they do show you how to use basic functions. But there are no answers for most of the questions that you will encounter. You must trial and error your way through this non-user-friendly program to accomplish anything in your mind's eye. I thought the whole purpose of a landscape program was to quickly try many different ideas for landscaping and see it in 3-D before you do any grunt work in your yard. But you end up doing tons of grunt work by just trying to figure out how to use this annoying product. The most frustrating thing is how exhausted you feel, and then you catch a glimpse of your yard out the window and realize that you haven't done anything yet.

I guess you could probably create what you want if you spend months of agonizing time in front of your computer, that is if you can resist the urge to chuck it through your living room window and onto your neglected dirt lawn. Seriously, you could spend as much time getting your yard the way you want it in this program as you would just drawing it on a piece of paper, then actually landscaping your actual lawn! Use your fifty bucks for an extra bush instead of buying this useless program.

"Missing features for even beginners", I live a a house trailer, 15 x 60. Basically a big rectangle. How much more simple could it be? But, it has a skirting raising it 3 ft off the ground. Thus my deck is also raised 3 ft up. An add-on room is an 18" step down.
After many tries I gave up trying to get this simple arrangement. The program insists I am either resting on a slab or on a footing and foundation, which I cannot raise the height on. The foundation is automatically set down in the the earth.
I have access doors at grade level to crawl under the house, but the program will not let me drag a door down that far.
My deck auto connects to the room level and I cannot raise it to show the space under neath. Decks seem to be only set at ground level
I tried faking a very low first story for the 3ft supports but this didn't work. You can edit "rooms" and lower their height but somehow this then raised the height on the floor above (my actual first level)
I find the manual to be minimal without additional tutorial on multilevel connecting rooms.
I cannot recommend it unless you are a master at work-arounds and gimmicky to overcome the programs limitations.

"Better Shut It Down & Get a Pencil & Paper", Better Homes & Garden Landscaping & Deck Designer 7.5 is a big disappointment. My spouse keeps telling me to quit yelling at this program; shut it down & get out some paper. We'll be done with our design in 2 hours. BHGLDD 7.5 is so user unfriendly. You can't input dimensions into objects. Copy & Pasting objects is difficult....heck, just selecting landscaping objects is a hair-puller. A real hassle. Try to mouse-draw a terrain line next a wall & then select said terrain line to input dimension data & the auto-snap to surrounding objects will drive you mad & stop you from selecting anything but walls. Why can't the user define an area & then auto-fill with selected building material in grid type fashion? Silly, really! I'm trying to create a patio out of paving stones & this bad program is taking my money & time...I'm shutting it down now!

We've been using Custom Home 3D by Sierra for many years with great success. Custom Home 3D was very inexpensive & has helped us with numerous floorplan & furnishing projects throughout our property developement stints. Custom Home 3D is not highest resolution, but does the job. Workarounds could be found with Custom Home...BHGLDD 7.5 is a selected by default nightmare, yuck!

_CT Reitzell

"Better Homes and Gardens Landscaping and Deck Designer", I agree with Josh. I've never been so frustrated in my life! What a waste of time and money. I tried it over and over thinking maybe I needed just a little more patience. I'm not sure an engineer with CAD experience could run this program let alone a novice. Don't waste your time.


"terrible", This is the most frustrating program ever. if you want to do land scape design. Your better off with a pad of paper and a pencil. It will take you less time and frustration than this thing will.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Awesome!", I purchased this to give to my mom for Mother's Day last year. She's in the process of trying to figure out what to do with her backyard and I figured this would be an ideal tool for her to use in order to get a preview of her backyard. She's fiddled around with it some, but has yet to upload photos of her backyard and really start messing around with it, but I suspect she'll get into it in due time.

"Absolutely Horrible", Do not waste your money! I consider myself pretty computer savvy, but this software is not easy to use. You'd have an easier time just drawing out your ideas by hand.

"Excellent software", The engine behind this program is from Chief Architect, who, from what I understand, are developers of professional CAD software. It shows in this program.

While this program has one of the best 3D walk around and capabilities, I tend to judge this and others by the drawing tools that it possesses. And this one has some good usable tools.

Like most consumer level landscaping programs, this one has photo import so you can design around an actual photo of your home. Unlike other programs, the BHG software allows you to import and mask your own plant images. This is a great feature that my own program has which gives much better visualization with plants you might actually use.

All the important stuff that we need to create a sellable visual landscape is there. For now, and with the choices I know of that are available to you, I find this to be the best consumer level landscape and garden program out there.

This design software comes with an easy to understand tutorial CD. It was easy to install and start using right away. I think most folks would do quite well with this one.


"terrible software", This is the worst software I have ever worked with, everything is difficult and some things are impossible to create.

"Pros & Cons of BHG Landscape & Deck Designer", All in all This program appears to be the best of what is available for landscaping and deck design. I found it easy to learn and implement except for some roof and elevation problems (which were unable to be resolved adequately). For Californians and many western region locales without gable or hip roofs it can be difficult to design your exact building, but this is the landscape and deck portion and not the entire building program. It does allow you to quickly design most landscape and deck designs possible and the 3D is drawn quickly and the detail is excellent. Trees and plants for many California locales are lacking, but it is possible to use a variety of trees/plants that will give you a good idea of what you are after. I found minor imperfections that were difficult to overcome in elevations but compared to what is available without learning a CAD program this is a bargain for the money paid.