If you want a beautiful garden next summer, now is the time to start planning.

Geoff Hamilton's 3D Garden is one of the best computer garden planners on the market and offers useful advice from the late TV gardener along with mass of related data to make garden designing more fun.

The CD-ROM allows you to select plants according to their colour, height, shape, flowering season and soil type.

All are listed in a plant encyclopaedia containing information on more than 3,700 species.

Features include a plant care calendar providing month-by-month information on care and nurturing of selected garden plants.

An encyclopaedia of plant diseases has details of all the nasty things that can happen to your beloved horticultural stock.

My favourite section was the virtual landscaping and design area where the budding planner can lay out their garden on the computer screen and fill it with verdant foliage and gorgeous virtual plants.

The application offers range of landscaping tools for re-sizing your patch, rotating, bending and moving objects, laying paths, driveways and flat surfaces and erecting fences.

Your plan can be turned into 3D graphics so you can wander round your virtual garden, get a feel for what it would look like in real life and admire your handiwork.

This programme offers plenty of great ideas but it is no substitute for an apprenticeship at Wisley.

Price: £19.99.

Contact: 01480 496 600.

Feel good factor:8 out of 10.