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Lets start outside with the Garden Encyclopedia 2 this CD is here to help you find the right plants for your garden. It contains more than 3,000 annuals, perennials, bulbs, ground cover, trees, shrubs and even vegetables. It has excellent photography and shows images in and out of situ. It also links to another of the four products 3D Landscape 2 allowing you to export plants to that so you can see the finished article before you start.

Now on to the 3D Landscape 2 Deluxe this should really come before Garden Encyclopedia as it helps you design your perfect garden, whilst you are designing any plants you have will probably be in the wrong place, or will simply be in the way. It claims to make gardening on your computer screen more fun than the real thing. As someone with a bad back I can say it is certainly less painful. Seriously though it has a section that allows you to see your garden seasonally. For instance your design could have a nice spring show, a riot of colour in the summer but looking decidedly bare in the autumn, change just a few items and get a garden that is great all year. If like me you are of mature years it is possible to switch between metric and imperial measures.

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Those of you who watch various DIY programs on television cannot have failed to see Tommy Walsh either in DIY or gardening programs so Tommy Walsh’s DIY Guide could be of assistance here to getting the home more acceptable. It covers basic and intermediate decorating, plumbing, electrical work, maintenance and of course garden construction. This is perhaps the most hands on of the four, each job starts with the summary planning the objective and making sure that you have the tools and materials you require. Knowing how long a job is likely to take is important and can save grief when the project overruns. Over 800 3D instructional images and diagrams to help you out, around 200 3D animations, lots of reference photographs and around 20 minutes of video to let you see exactly how it should be done.

Finally – or maybe it should be firstly – Visual Home Deluxe this package allows you to take your shell or even something that is only a paper plan or maybe just a plot of land and turn it into a dream home. This is far more than the bricks and mortar as it allows you to position furniture and even soft furnishings. Start with the quick design wizard and create a floor plan on the screen in very little time. It contains over 2000 models of real manufactured products so no guessing of will the washing machine fit find out on screen and save the back ache and Anglo-Saxon wordage when you find it won’t. A feature called Shopping List allows you to track costs and see where the money went.

These four products complement each other and therefore have some overlap but they are all useful and by buying the four in the one pack you save money, normally £9.99 each the four are sold in the Making Your House Your Home pack for £24.99, they are republished by Focus, available from dealers, I give the Focus site but this is so new it does not appear there yet.

www.focusmm.co.uk