![]() I have created a simple grid you can download and use. Now, let’s make a grid that will be perfect 1 ft by 1 ft squares to help us view our garden at the correct scale and plan our plant spacing. Just in case, let’s not delete the image we used, but instead, make it transparent, using the instructions above in Step 3, Item 1. With your garden shapes in place, you can remove the image of your garden. I used the circle tool to denote where I have my plant pots. ![]() Shapes, like Rectangles and Circles are found under the circle/square icon. The Line and Polyline tools are found under “Line” in the menu when you begin in Google Drawings. It is a little trickier to use, but remember, you can undo anything easily, so don’t get frustrated. But if your garden is like mine, it is a bunch of odd shapes, and the free-form line tool called Polyline is going to be your tool of choice. For circles/pots, the circle tool will be perfect. If your garden is very rectangular, use the rectangle shape tool. We can do this in a few ways in Google Drawings, and which works for you will depend on the shape of your garden spaces. My garden, fully filling the page and the scale safely at the top left. Once you have this small scale cropped, drag it out of the way. You may have to drag the image up a bit to get it into the viewable area. Using the crop tool, crop the top image down to only show the 10 ft scale. ![]() Copy and paste another of your maps on top of the first. This top copy will be for our scale, and the bottom for the garden map.Be sure to only trim the top and left! When you crop, you select the portion of the picture you wish to keep. The CROP icon is highlighted in the toolbar. Zooming Out (View->Zoom>50%) can also be very helpful when getting the map to the size you want, as well as cropping the top and left of the image (remember, you need that scale on the bottom right to remain!). I also recommend trimming the map down to the page after you get your scale measure Using the transparency slider, you can find the edges of the page. If you have trouble telling where the page edges are, you can adjust the transparency: right-click the image, select “Format Options”, and choose “Adjustments” to get the Transparency slider. Keep doing this until your garden area just about fills the page. Holding SHIFT makes sure you don’t stretch or squash your image. To resize your map, click on it, then, while holding down the SHIFT key, drag a corner.To make this easier, I recommend resizing the image in to fill the page, then copy-pasting another copy on top. While in Google Drawings, we need to make sure we can do two things: Trace our garden spaces AND get an accurate map scale. You should now see your image in Google Drawings. ![]() My map here is a little different, as I already removed the browser header by using the crop tool. Name your Google Drawing File and paste in your map screenshot. Now, in Google Drawings, hold down the Ctrl key and press the V key (PC) or Command + V (Mac).On a Mac, it’s Command+Control+Shift+3 to save your screen to the clipboard.On a Windows Computer, hold down the Alt key and press Print Screen.While viewing your map on Google Maps, copy your screen:.There are instructions on creating a Google Account here. If you are logged into Google on your browser, this link will open a new Google Drawings document for you. You will need a Google login to use it (If you use photo-editing software, like Photoshop, feel free to use it instead-I chose to demonstrate using Google Drawings because it is free and widely available). Step 2: Tweak Your Map in Google Drawings When you’ve successfully found a photo that will show you your garden as best it can, move on to Step 2. Strangely, adjusting this view on your computer will then update your browser view, so that you can take the aerial photo we need with the scale in the right bottom corner. You will need to install Google Earth Pro on your computer to get the Timeline feature to change your view. If not, are there huge tree shadows or other obstructions? Was the satellite photo taken at a time of year where the whole area is just green, so it’s hard to tell where the edges of your garden plots are? Google takes many photos every year, so to get a better image for our mapping needs, we will need to do some extra steps. ![]()
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