On of my relative’s house is a very plain manufactured home:

I gave them a landscape design for a present and recently finished the front planting bed. I wanted to get rid of the look of the manufactured home, and add lots more plants. I went with plants that mirrored the blue-grey and maroon in the house color, focusing primarily on foliage color. There are actually lots of interesting blue-grey/purple-leafed plants out there, so it was a fun design to do. The following plan could be planted more heavily, but I decided it was  good enough start.

I also decided to experiment with a digital makeover. I saw some on another garden blog and wanted to give it a go. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be, and the results are dramatic. I think people are much more likly to follow a landscape plan when they can see it as it would turn out. Overhead plans are functional, but don’t have the wow factor. Here’s the generated image of the matured landscape:

I’m pleased with how it turned out and have shared it a lot. It is the first of a lot more mock-ups follow: I enjoy doing it and it helped my planting plan as well.