Planting real species

The Planting panel gives the trees and shrubs on your plan a real species, so each one is drawn at the right size, with the right symbol, and named on the drawing.

Opening the panel

Giving a plant a real species is on every plan, and so is opening a design that already has one. The checks, the suggestions and the planting schedule are Pro and above — see What needs Pro below. Four ways in:

• The Trees… menu, then More species… — the panel opens ready to place.
• A tree card in the object library on the right.
• A selected tree or shrub: Species… on the right-click menu, or Species on the toolbar.
• The hedge designer, for the mix in a planted hedge.

Species come from a published plant data release. Until one reaches your browser the panel says so and trees still place as generic symbols. Browsing the list stays available in a view-only session; only changes are blocked.

Choosing a species

Type into Search botanical or common name — accepted and former names match too, so an old name still finds the plant. The chips filter: Tree, Shrub, Native, Evergreen, Small (<8 m), Medium, Large (>15 m) and Columnar. Chips in the same group widen the match, chips from different groups narrow it, and a chip never returns a species whose data is silent on it.

Each row carries the code the species will take, its names and mature size, and badges for native status, evergreen foliage, RHS hardiness, HTA toxicity category and thorns. From the search box press Down to step into the list, arrow through it, then Enter. What a row then does depends on how you opened the panel: opened from a selected plant — Species… on the right-click menu or the toolbar — a row applies that species to the selection; opened to plant something new, from More species… or a tree card, it arms placing and you click the plan, Esc to finish. Opened from a selection you then clear, the list places too: there is nothing left to apply to.

Stock sizes

A new plant gets the stock a nursery would supply: for a single tree a standard nearest 12–14 cm girth, for a shrub the pot nearest 3 litres, for a hedge bare-root hedging stock. Change it under Stock, which lists every size that species is offered in. Stock is where growth starts, so it sets the size drawn at planting.

Reading the symbols

The symbol follows the species' own data, not your choice:

• Deciduous — a filled canopy with short ticks around the rim.
• Conifer — a star-edged canopy with lines radiating from the centre, for needle and scale leaves.
• Evergreen — a scalloped rim.
• Shrub — a lobed, cloud-like outline with a small cross at the centre.
• Multi-stem — three dots at the centre in place of one.

Canopies are drawn at the species' spread for the age you are viewing and tinted with its foliage colour. Each plant takes a small rotation and up to 8 % of size variation from its position, so a row of one species does not look stamped and looks the same on every device.

Showing plants at an age

Show plants at offers Plant, 5, 10, 15, 25 and Mature — years after planting; arrow keys step along it. This is a view setting, not part of the design: it is remembered on your device, starts at 15 years, and resizes plants on the plan and in 3D at once. A sketch sheet can be pinned to one age for printing with Plants drawn at in Sketch style; while a pinned sheet is on screen the control shows that age and is disabled.

Existing trees and trees to be removed

Status has four values. Proposed plants grow with the age control. Existing, Retained and Removed are what is already on site, so they are drawn at mature size whatever age you view, and outlined rather than filled; a removed tree is dashed and crossed through. The generator treats them differently too: an existing or retained tree keeps its mature canopy clear, a proposed one only its planting pit, and a tree to be removed is no obstacle at all. On a sketch sheet a tree to be removed is see-through, so whatever lies beneath shows.

Tree survey and root protection areas

Select an existing or retained tree and the panel adds a Tree survey: its tag, stem diameters, height, crown spread, BS 5837 category (A high, B moderate, C low, U unsuitable for retention) and whether a tree preservation order covers it. Write stems the way a surveyor does, in millimetres measured at 1.5 m: 450, 300, 250 or 3x200 (45cm works too). A list it cannot read is refused rather than saved short, because a root protection area drawn from half a survey is the dangerous kind of wrong.

With every stem entered, the tree’s root protection area (RPA) is drawn as a dashed circle in its category colour, by the BS 5837 method as councils publish it: 12 × the stem diameter for one stem; for two to five, the combined diameter (the square root of the sum of the squares); for more than five, the mean diameter × √n; never more than 707 m². The panel gives the radius and area. The RPA has its own row in the sketch style list and its own DXF layer, PLANT_RPA, and the generator keeps the larger of the RPA and the canopy clear.

The design review then checks Pro: a dwelling reaching into an RPA (a warning for A, B or uncategorised trees, a note for C or U); new hard surfacing — roads and footways, drives, paths, bays and paving — over more than 20% of an RPA, the figure council tree officers take as a default position; retained trees still missing their stems; and a tree you have recorded under a preservation order that is marked for removal. We hold no TPO data of our own, so that check only knows what you tell it. None of this is an arboricultural impact assessment.

Codes on the plan

Each species takes a short code from its name — Quercus robur becomes QR, and a cultivar adds nothing, so Acer campestre 'Elsrijk' is AC. A clash adds a digit (QR2, QR3), and hedges are numbered H1, H2. Codes are drawn on the plant at a constant size on screen, and left off canopies too small to carry them. The same chip appears on picker rows, so you can see the code before you place anything.

Giving old trees a species

Designs drawn before this existed hold generic trees. When there are any, the panel shows a line such as 12 trees have no species with an Assign default species button: it gives every generic tree the species its symbol always stood for — the large tree becomes Quercus robur, the small one Sorbus aucuparia, the conifer Pinus sylvestris, the birch Betula pendula, the columnar poplar Populus nigra 'Italica' and the cherry Prunus 'Accolade' — in one undo step. Generic shrubs have no default of their own, so they keep their symbol until you give them a species yourself. Locked plants are left alone, and a tree in an avenue takes its species on the run rather than one copy at a time.

What needs Pro

Drawing the planting is on every plan. Judging it is Pro and above.

Every plan, including Free: choosing a species and a stock size; mature sizes, symbols, species codes and the age slider; planted hedges and their mixes; botanical names in the tree & landscaping schedule; and opening, reading and printing any planted design someone else drew. A design you are sent always looks and measures the same whatever plan you are on.

Pro and above: the twenty species and tree checks in Checks — invasive listings, toxic planting near play, thorns on a route, mature size against the space, water demand near foundations, species diversity, and species against the site’s soil and climate; what else could go here, which suggests alternatives; and the Planting schedule with its costing in the appraisal.

On a plan without them, Checks says so rather than going quiet: it reports how many species checks did not run. Silence would read as nothing being wrong. Every design-review check that needs no plant data runs for everyone: play beside open water, public space nothing overlooks, plot numbering, the road checks (fire appliance access, refuse vehicle reversing, long roads serving few homes, homes behind a single link), the walking checks and the bin collection and street checks.