What a fantastic project! Designing a water garden is an inspiring task but comes with challenges. While things can get complicated, water garden design software handles a lot of the complexities for you. SketchUp garden design is a popular choice with landscape architects, garden designers and even ordinary homeowners who just want to design a water garden they’re proud of. If you’re bust researching software for water garden design, this is your page. By the end of it you’ll have a clear picture of how SketchUp supports design brilliance every step of the way by speeding up your workflow, enhancing your creativity, and convincing your clients. You’ll have a wonderful time creating beautiful outdoor spaces with a water focus. Read on to find out how.
Introduction to SketchUp Garden Design
SketchUp is great for garden and landscape design. It won’t take long before you’re using its water garden design software elements without thinking about it, it’s so intuitive. You’ll work with confidence and flair, quickly bringing your garden and landscape designs to life. You’ll make totally accurate 2D drawings in no time, which you’ll transform into stunning and highly engaging 3D models of your ideas. It’s extremely easy to get started with landscape and garden design using SketchUp, too. How come? You build realistic landscape surfaces and terrains with just a few clicks.
It’s a simple matter to import real terrain imagery of every kind via SketchUp’s geo-location facility, perfect when you need to be 100% accurate. And you’ll love the way you can import excellent 3D models from a choice of literally thousands of entourage objects, free from the SketchUp 3D warehouse and including essentials like vegetation, vehicles, garden features and garden lighting. They’re all free, and easy to use in your own designs in any way you fancy.
Designing a Water Garden with SketchUp
The SketchUp 3D warehouse is a massive resource for SketchUp users, and it’s growing all the time as users add their own pre-defined creations to the collection. If you want to add water features to your water garden design there’s a huge choice, from a variety of ponds to fountains, water features and garden furniture. But there’s a lot more than watery resources in the warehouse. There are also trees, shrubs and plants of every kind plus entire pre-created gardens for you to download and play with. There’s garden furniture of every type and style, lawns, decorative aggregates… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
These cool pre-designed elements provide an abundance of inspiration for SketchUp garden design projects including water, as well as saving lots of time and effort when you’re designing a water garden. So how simple is it? Let’s take a look. Here’s how to use SketchUp to design a water garden.
- Use the rectangle tool to define the basic garden shape
- Use the 2 point arc tool to create curves wherever you want them
- Create depth using the offset and push/pull tools
- Remove unwanted lines
- Group the pond elements into one object
- Use the ‘Materials’ feature in SketchUp to create realistic surfaces on the walls and the ground, anything from real stone-effect to gravel, brick, paving, grass, you name it
- To draw the water all you do is choose ‘water’ from the materials list, and use the bucket tool to apply water to the pond
- Select items from the SketchUp 3D warehouse to complete your water garden design – such as plant pots, furniture, and water features like streams and fountains
- Scale your design up or down instantly with the Scale tool
That’s it. See how simple it is? Can you imagine how much fun you’ll have when you get the basics sorted so quickly? SketchUp is such a great tool for garden design, the perfect way to fully express your idea and innovations, creativity and skill. The end result is beautifully-rendered, engaging 3D models that are hyper-real, with water that looks watery, lit to perfection using powerful exterior lighting plug-ins.
Inspired? Would you like to give it a go? Try the Pro version of SketchUp free for 7 days here. And explore the countless exciting tutorials we’ve put together to help you get where you want to be in no time. This is your doorway to everything that’s best about 3D design in one place.
