Backyard Designs

Looking to have a nice garden with lot of colourful flowers & design for front & back yard.

I am currently trying plan a design for my backyard landscape, does anyone know of anythings I should keep in mind? I live in zone 10b and have dogs and know that I want something relatively low maintainance. What are things that are more on the actual design side that I should think about?

Does Autocad provide landscape design friendly version? any free library,module, instruction to input?

I need 3D animation for garden, is Maya the best? I heard 3D max is not that good,

How about Dynascape?

I have Vecterwork, the support is very bad, your opinion?

I am looking for good web sites who offer free information concerning the marketing of a landscape design business. I have found several pertaining to landscape building and landscape maintenance, but non for landscape design.