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It sounds like you may already be a good designer, but are looking to make nicer looking plans.
Hand drawing vs. CAD is not a yes or no answer. It depends how well you can draw, how well you can CAD draft, and how much your drawings will have to come from or go to other design professionals.
I use CAD, but I do not have professional quality drawing hands. For me, it is also important to be exchanging files with architects, engineers, and surveyors which means CAD is essential.
As far as being a fine quality document for implementing a landscape design, it does not matter. It has to be able to communicate what is necessary for the particular job, should be helpful in making a sale, and should be efficient to produce. Sometimes that means a lot of precision or a pretty well rendered plan while other times a scrap paper with a quick sketch is fine. It depends on what your designing, who it is for, to what degree of accuracy is necessary, and how much effort you can invest in the design (design profit or potential sale).
You have to know your market and where you fit into it in order to really know what is too much and what is not enough. Sometimes it is best if you can identify a viable market and target it as a niche for you to operate in.
In my opinion, too many landscapers try to fill every part of the market. When they do that they tend to wallow in the lower end of it. I think that it is because the lower you get in the market, the bigger the market is. Just on those odds the likelihood of a higher volume of lower end work is always higher. I also think we are all identified by our lowest 30% of work.
I still have not found a landscaper that does not describe his work as high end. I was once given the advice not to do any discount work because once you do you are then a discounter.
Aim high and stay high (not a Cheech and Chong reference).
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