Shoot Gardening - a garden designers perspective on using Shoot and the new SketchUp plugin to create professional planting plans
- Alison Johnston
- Nov 19
- 6 min read
Creating detailed and accurate planting plans can be a time-consuming and complex task for garden designers. Finding the right plants, organising them into coherent groups, and visualising the final layout often requires juggling multiple tools and spreadsheets. Recently, I started using the Shoot Gardening tool, and it has significantly changed how I approach planting design. This post shares my experience with the software, highlighting its strengths and areas where it could improve.
This article contains an affiliate link, meaning I earn a small commission if you choose to purchase a Shoot subscription using my link. I haven't been paid to write this article and it fully represents my own personal experience. It doesn't cost you anything and it helps a small business owner (me!) pay my bills. I might even post a cheeky promo code at the end of the article if you read that far! |
Easy plant search and flexible plant list uploads
One of the first things I noticed about Shoot Gardening is its user-friendly plant search function. The database includes a HUGE number of plants, making it easy to find species by name, characteristics, or categories. Even when I needed to add plants not yet in the database, the process was surprisingly quick. It took me less than a day to request new varieties, which was a great turnaround by the team at Shoot. I love the plant list upload feature, which you can just add a typed list of plants and it will match them, showing what each plant it thinks you've asked for, so you can confirm or search again.
That said, the plant details sometimes lack the depth I would prefer. For example, for varieties of a species, I like to know what makes that variety particularly special or different from similar plants. The photos can also be hit or miss, with some images not giving a full account of a plant. For example for a tree or shrub I'd like to see an image of the whole plant as well a close ups of leaf, flower and berries, which isn't always the case. These are minor issues, though, and the database is regularly updated, so I expect improvements over time.
Interactive mood boards and planting lists
Shoot Gardening offers interactive mood boards that help me organize plants visually. I can filter plants by planted or proposed status, or even create my own groups. This feature makes it easier to experiment with different combinations and themes without losing track of what I have already planned.
The planting lists generated from these mood boards are dynamic and easy to adjust. This flexibility helps me stay organized and communicate clearly with clients or contractors. For example, I recently created a planting list for a garden with four large beds with different conditions. Plants can be in one group or more than one group too, which is something I often do to bring unity to a garden. The ability to filter and rearrange these lists saved me hours compared to traditional methods.
I was also able to share this list in the tool directly with my client to mixed success. I found they were able to see the plants but not edit the list despite me setting the permissions to do so. In the end she emailed me the list of plants she didn't like and we moved forward that way. The Shoot team did respond to my query fairly quickly, but we didn't resolve it as the time to take and email screenshots just didn't seem worth it when my client had already moved on.
Visualizing garden designs in 3D
One of the standout features of Shoot Gardening is the integration with a 3D Sketchup model. I can drag and drop plants directly onto the garden layout, which helps me see how the design will look in real life. This visual approach makes it easier to spot potential issues like overcrowding or poor plant placement.
However, I do need to assign a suitable 2D faceme image for each new plant I add. Not every plant has an ideal image available, which can affect the realism of the model. Still, the images provided are decent, and the library is always growing. This 3D visualisation has become an essential part of my workflow, especially when presenting plans to clients who appreciate seeing a clear representation of their future garden. Unlike using a 3D component where I can adjust the rotation and scale of each plant to make them look more realistic and appealing, the visual does look a little regimented. However, the plant outlines are very tidy (certainly compared to 3D Warehouse faceme components) and not having to scale every component is a massive time saver. Where something is slow growing, I have been able to edit the scale to account for a more realistic size, so there's still some flexibility in there. Another niggle is that sometimes the plan symbol appears on a 3D visual when it goes to LayOut and it's a bit tricky trying to figure out how to hide it.
Creating a planting plan diagram in Layout
Rather nicely, I can now export my planting plan view from SketchUp directly to Layout, which is the SketchUp tool I use for creating my documents. The 'top down' or plan view converts the 2D faceme plants into plan symbols. Again, Shoot's native choice of symbols isn't great, and I needed to choose a plan symbol from their dropdown menu but there's plenty to choose from, or you can use round circles with abbreviated plant names. Again, it's synchronised so if I make a change in Sketchup, it flows to the plan too, which is a great time saver. When labelling plants, the autotext function works for the symbols so it does feed through the names, another time saver. It's not quite able to feed through the quantities too, although I think the folks at Shoot have a workaround for that. In my instance, I typed them in. This still saves time, as it's usually the botanical names of plants where typos tend to creep in, so it's a big help there.
Generating accurate plant lists
Once I finalise a design, Shoot Gardening allows me to generate a plant list report in CSV or Excel format. This report counts the plants included in the model, which removes a tedious manual task from my workflow. It’s especially useful for ordering plants or preparing detailed documentation for nurseries.
One thing to watch out for is accidentally placing plants under terrain layers in the model, which can cause small discrepancies in the count. This is more of a user error than a software flaw, but it does mean you need to be careful when positioning plants.
Suggested functionality
If I could wave a magic wand, what would I want Shoot to do? Currently, Shoot is accessible solely through a website or as a plugin for Sketchup. I'd love the ability to stroll through a client's garden and enter the plants I observe via dictation, photo recognition, or typing. I guess I could access Shoot on my phone and attempt it that way, but having an app would make it easier on-site.
At the moment, when I create a plant list for a client, I have to export it from SketchUp and manually re-import it into Layout to add it into a document. It's not too bad, but a cheeky plugin to do that automatically would be lovely, especially if it was a live list that updated if the model did too.
Overall benefits and areas for improvement
Shoot Gardening has become a valuable tool in my planting design process. It saves time, improves organisation, and enhances visualisation. The ability to quickly add new plants and create interactive mood boards makes it flexible enough for a wide range of projects.
That said, there are some areas where the tool could improve:
More detailed plant information would help with making better-informed design decisions.
Higher quality and more consistent plant photos would improve the visual experience.
Expanding the faceme image library would make 3D models more realistic.
Despite these minor issues, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. Shoot Gardening supports designers by simplifying complex tasks and helping create professional planting plans efficiently.
If you've made it this far, thanks! Here's a link to Shoot and if you use the code BF50 it's 50% off the current subscriptions. Oh, and if you need help creating a planting plan, book a site visit with me. |