Gardening: Plans put you in the pink

I was certainly born before computers - I'm not saying how long before - but I never had to garden without one. I wasn't remotely interested in gardening early on and by the time I became obsessed with the lifestyle and habits of Ornithogalum adseptentrionesvergentulum and Leucospermum hypophyllocarpodendron (the two longest plant names in the world) and the like, my Mac had become as valued a tool as my trowel. I mean, how do you think I knew the two longest plant names in the world? Google told me.

Google also tells me, daily, such things as if and when to prune, how to kill paspalum, how to change the soil pH, whether there's such a thing as a moisture metre on the New Zealand market and what that stunning, bright orange, ginger-coloured thing is called. Where would I be without it?

Of course, Google doesn't know everything. It doesn't know what's true and what's not, so it's up to me to figure out which websites are credible and which are not.

My favourites for straight information are the websites of American universities. They post all sorts of interesting articles, many by professors of horticulture, on everything from pruning citrus to planting a successful apartment garden. The latter story, which I found on the Colorado University's site at www.ext.colostate.edu, was full of useful stuff but I'd only read half of it when The Landscaper fell upon one about linking landscapes with ground covers, a challenge which has been occupying his every waking moment for the past week.

If you're in a drought zone, have a look at www.arizona.edu for info on how to deal with a dry garden.

When I have a design problem with my own garden, I go to www.houzz.com Houzz is short for house buzz, and I must warn you not to go there unless you have heaps of time and are immune to wanting what you probably can't have.

It's a site for house/garden/design lovers and it's impossible to come away from it without an idea. Having ideas is all very fine, but you need a way to bring them together in a cohesive plan. You can do this using garden design software, and although you'll probably have to pay to get a good program there's a huge range. I bought my first one - basic but very useful and easy to learn - for about $30. I use it for revamping my own garden and putting together basic designs for other people. It's called Garden Planner and you can check it out at www.smallblueprinter.com

Now I'm beginning to yearn for something that will turn my plans into 3D drawings.

A good rainy-day task is finding plants for specific planting plans. This is probably a bit cheeky, but I take huge advantage of the New Zealand nurseries that have good websites, even if I'm not going to buy my plants there. My favourite is www.waiere.co.nz

It has a fantastic catalogue of plants with good, clear images of each, and good information about how they grow.

Another good trick is to type what you're looking for, for example "pink flowering tree", into Google, and then click on "images".

You'll be shown page upon page of photographs of pink flowering trees, and you can select those you like to find more info about. Such a time-waster because, if you're anything like me, you'll find something rare and obscure that you simply have to have and spend even more time on the computer trying to find someone who sells it. Case in point: pink wattle.

I'm still looking.