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Christian,
Sketchup is a very good program because it is easy to learn and can be used to create 3D models quickly. However, the end results are usually somewhat unrealistic and sometimes almost cartoonish. Hence the use of Adobe suite with sketchup, but you still often get renderings that look a little mismatched (plants dont quite match the sketchup rendering, etc.). I use sketchup but combined with a render engine called Kerkythea-I create the model in sketchup and export the model into Kerkythea where I apply materials and lights to do the final render. I also add most of my plant material in Kerkythea, which brings me to my next point-one of the toughest parts of landscape rendering is acheiveing realistic plant material. You can get some pretty good shrubs and grasses in sketchup, but only a few look realistic.
The best program I have found for creating plant material is called Greenworks XFrog. Be warned however, this program is very advanced and very tough to learn. You can find free samples of some of their plants online or you can simply buy their premade plant libraries (this is probably your best option). You can then add these very realistic plant materials into Kerkythea.
Now, about some of the benefits of Kerkythea: the program is freeware so it won’t cost your company a thing, and it is a very powerful render engine once you learn to use it. Kerkythea is a ray tracing program which means it is very good at rendering light components and their actions. Also, the online forum on the Kerkythea website is incredibly helpful-I have taught myself Kerkythea, and whenever I had a question or problem the forum is the place to go.
Below are some examples of renderings I’ve done with Sketchup and Kerkythea:
