New Virtual Garden Designer Tool from the Suntory Collection Makes It Easy to Create Colorful Garden

TOKYO, Japan - Dec. 3, 2013 - PRLog -- Beautiful gardens abound on home shows and in gardening magazines—and that Eden of beauty can seem unattainable for the average home gardener. Just how do these experts make landscapes look so beautiful?

“Creating a home garden brimming with beautiful blooming color starts with a design plan. It’s okay to ask for help. What looks sweet in the garden center might not be the best color scheme in the garden,” says Evelyn Alemanni, an award-winning gardener, author and designer.

Now professional landscape design help is just a click away with the new Virtual Garden Designer (http://suntorycollection.com/popup/garden_design.html) from The Suntory Collection. Best yet, the free online tool lets gardeners “test drive” color and plant choices before making the purchase.

“When entering a garden center, shoppers are surrounded by explosions of color, and that can really be overwhelming,” says Alemanni. “Like a kid in a candy store, a gardener can go overboard, using the ‘some of these, some of those’ approach and mixing without much concern for matching.”

The Virtual Garden Designer is a simple drag and drop online tool that allows users to compare flower color combinations planted as a group in a particular area as well as across the entire yard.

“It can keep gardeners from making costly mistakes,” says Alemanni.

How It Works

The free Virtual Garden Designer is a simple drag and drop online tool. Users first choose one of several planting areas in a virtual landscape, select up to three different flowers and then drop them into the selected garden spot.

A thumbnail of the garden illustrates those plant combinations. Want to see them? Just click OK to see how they will look fully grown in the landscape. “This is important because sometimes plants grow much bigger or smaller than you think,” warns Alemanni.

Clicking the clear button allows users to start over to create the combinations of plant color and forms again and again until just the right look is achieved. Proceeding in this way with each of the planting areas helps users design an entire “virtual landscape” step by step.

Design Tips

When it comes to creating a beautiful garden and yard, Alemanni is ready with expertise. She suggests using just one color in large swathes of the garden border or in garden islands. The Surfinia® Trailing Petunias, for example, create waves of spreading color. Choosing one Surfinia petunia color creates a bold and visually stunning garden.

Repeating that bold color in smaller plantings or in combination containers brings a cohesiveness to the landscape, Alemanni adds. The Virtual Garden Designer tool offers more than 20 types of plants from The Suntory Collection and many colors within each to create subtle repeating of color.

Lastly, Alemanni suggests going for broke by adding at least one large showstopper of a plant, either hanging in a container or growing up a trellis. The Sun Parasol® Mandevillas, which now come in a variety of colors and flower sizes, fills the bill with its somewhat tubular tropical flowers and glossy green leaves. Natural climbers, these mandevillas are stunning trained to a trellis or cascading from a hanging basket.

“The Virtual Garden Designer tool has saved me time in the garden center,” Alemanni says. “During the busy growing seasons, the tool helps me decide in advance what I am looking for, and that helps me get in and out of the store quickly. I have better things to do on beautiful sunny weekends in spring and summer!”

To access and use the free Virtual Garden Designer tool online, find it at:
http://suntorycollection.com/popup/garden_design.html.

To learn more about The Suntory Collection of beautiful flowers, visit www.suntorycollection.com.