I am trying to map plant death in a garden experiment. The location of the garden doesn't matter, I just care about each plant in relation to the others. They were all planted on a grid system. My data looks like this:

```
Column Row Plant State
1      1   3333  Alive
1      2   3334  Alive
1      3   3335  Dead
2      1   3336  Dead
2      2   3337  Alive
2      3   3338  Alive
3      1   3339  Alive
3      2   3340  Alive
3      3   3341  Dead

```

I want each plant to be a point on the grid with the column functioning as the X and the row as the Y coordinates. I'll then use symbology to change the point colors to reflect the state of the plant.

My questions:

1. Is this at all reasonable/feasible to do with GIS?
2. If it is, how do I create an artificial coordinate system that would work for my purposes?
3. If not, what program would you recommend (that would ideally take an .xlxs or .xls file)?

I can use either ArcGIS or QGIS so please give recommendations for which would be easier.