How to Create a Landscape Design

Creating a landscape in SmartDraw is very similar to creating a floor plan, but with a specific set of features designed just for landscaping, allowing you to easily plan out great looking yards, gardens, business parks and whatever kind of outdoor spaces you have in mind.

Start with a Landscape Template

To get started, open the Template Browser to the Landscape Design section and select either a blank template or one of the examples built by SmartDraw's in-house designers. The tools in the SmartPanel are now customized to help you create a landscape.

Set the Scale

Each landscape design template already has a default scale set to 1 inch = 8 feet. You can change the scale in the Page ribbon by clicking on Scale. You can switch to a metric scale or set your own custom scale.

Create a Boundary

To create a boundary, click on the Add Single Wall tool. Click once in your work area to begin drawing and then stretch the wall to length that you desire. Continue adding more boundary lines to define your space. To get out of wall mode, hit the select button in the Home ribbon or click the Esc button on your keyboard. You can adjust the dimensions of the space you just created by resizing each boundary manually or click on the dimension value of any boundary and type in your desired length.

Adding Texture

If you used the wall tool to create an enclosed space, you can add a photo-realistic texture to it to show an area meant to be used for grass, bricks, paving stones or whatever surface your plan calls for. Select the area, click on Fill on the Home ribbon, and select Textures from the dropdown.

Add Landscape Features

Just like adding furniture and appliances to your floor plan, SmartDraw makes it easy to add lawn furniture, greenery and a vast assortment of landscape features like pools, fountains, footpaths, and even koi ponds. There is already a library of landscape symbols docked to the left of your drawing area. If you see the feature you want there, just select it and drag it to where you want it to go. If you don't see what you're looking, click on More for additional symbol options. You'll see libraries for Greenery and Furniture, in addition to Features. You can also search SmartDraw's entire collection of symbol libraries by clicking on the Search Symbols option.

Once you've added a symbol to the page, you can use its control handles (the black squares around the object) to resize, rotate and move it or change its dimensions by typing in the object's size.

Add Text

The Text tool allows you to indicate what is intended for certain areas and to specify the types of plants, trees and flowers that you want. Just click on the Text button in the Home ribbon and type. You can also use the Line tool to draw an arrow to indicate what it references. First, draw the type of line you want: straight, curved or segmented, then click on Line to add arrowheads.