If you don't have a garden, or someone else in the family does all of that, then you're very lucky. But if you have the remotest interest in gardening, this excellent little programme is practical, useful, great fun, and at about £15 you won't need a mortgage.

The manual is onscreen, rather than in book form, but you can easily print it off. You then need to go out and "pace" the measurements of your plot so that you can draw up a simple plan. After that, you "place" objects from the built in library, switch to 3D view, and you can then wander around your creation and see what it looks like.

There is in fact a huge selection of plants, trees, garden sheds, cars, dogs, cats & kitchen sinks - and if you can't find what you're looking for there are "wizards" to help you create it. The plant encyclopaedia contains a few thousand items, each with pictures, dimensions, planting advice and the ability to view, in 3D mode, exactly what your garden will look like each month, as different items flower. It doesn't, unfortunately, have the automatic facility to allow you to go forward in time and watch the plants grow, you have to do that manually

Personally, I found the software easy & instinctive, and ever time I use it I discover yet more capabilities that it has. It's a shame it doesn't have a demo "first garden" with step by step instructions , but for this price you can't have everything.