Every landscape design needs a plant identifier. This can take many different forms – individual plants can be tagged with a text indicator, species can be identified by their symbol in a plant schedule (table) or tagged by using the leader command. Experience has shown that labeling each plant with a leader is not helpful to the client or construction team as the drawing becomes very crowded.
A better solution is to create a plant list that’s specific for the locality involved. GardenCAD and gCADPlus use text files to hold species data. Once the text file is attached to the design, each species symbol is tagged and a tool on the gCADPlus menu does the rest. The number of each species used in the design is counted automatically and a plant schedule (species list) generated. This saves much time.
Plant species lists
Here are links to some of the plant database files. Most are delivered with the gCADPlus installation. Each is a text file with the extension .gcp and can be viewed by attaching the file to a gCADPlus drawing or opened using a text editor or Excel.
Use Excel
How to open one of the files shown below using Excel. If you have downloaded one of the gcp files, start Excel, navigate to your downloads folder, open a new drawing
How to rearrange the column order in a gCADPlus database (gcp) file when the custom plant schedule tool failed. We take a file in which the order of columns does not match the gCADPlus standard, import into Excel, change column order and export to a TAB separated txt file. That file is renamed and used in a gCADPlus drawing to successfully draw a custom plant schedule.
The main gCADPlus plant list – GardenCAD.gcp (Mostly Australian species – contains > 500 entries)
A plant database file used in a training exercise in C3 of the gCADPlus user guide
A plant database for species useful in Florida
A plant database for species useful in Paris
A plant database list of edible species suitable for tropical gardens
A Plant database list of species for British Columbia (Canada)
A species list for Eyre Peninsula (South Australia)
A species list for Canberra (ACT Australia)
A species list for Toowoomba (Darling Downs, Queensland)
A species list for English Cottage gardens
A list of species suitable for Western Europe
A list of species suitable for Mauritius
A list of species suitable for Ohio
Using lists in landscape design software
Click to see the data file, right click and choose Save As.
Tip: to use the list in either GardenCAD or gCADPlus, make sure your downloaded file has the extension .gcp
Start gCADPlus (download a demo version from this page) and from the gCADPlus drop menu, select “Attach gcp file”
