The Complete Garden Design Course - 3. How To Design

A course explaining the techniques of design used by professional garden designers and landscape architects

What you'll learn

Master all the essential skills and techniques of designing gardens used by professional garden designers and landscape architects

Follow step by step design demonstrations from empty bare garden plots to finished illustrated designs filmed from above a drawing board

Undertake in your own time 13 design exercises supported by download resources

Create your own designs for six different gardens of varying size, shape and complexity in different design styles, using supplied base plans

Learn how to critically assess your own design work to achieve the best results

Learn all the important design considerations needed to create original and attractive gardens and how to find inspiration for your designs

Requirements

No pre-existing skills are needed for this course.

However it would be useful to have learnt the techniques taught in the first two courses in this series on Design Principles and Drawing Techniques before starting this course.

A list of drawing equipment needed to complete the design exercises is provided at start of Section 2 of the course.

Description

The primary aim of this course is to give you a thorough grounding in the techniques of how to approach the design of a garden, progressing through all the stages from the outline of an empty garden plot right up to a fully illustrated garden design.I strongly believe that the most effective way of teaching garden design skills is to involve students in designing for themselves right from the start. So, with this in mind, I have designed 13 exercises where you can pause the presentation of the course and work through each exercise in your own time supported by download resourcesIn six of these exercises, gardens of varying size, shape, style and complexity are introduced. This is followed by demonstrations, filmed from above a drawing board, of all the stages in the design of each garden. You will then be able to create your own designs for these gardens using the supplied base plans.The presentation of this course includes more than 70 slides to accompany a commentary on how to design, and these slides combine examples of garden design projects, images, sketches, photos, plans and diagrams. Each slide will also include bullet points summarising the main points of my commentary, and these bullet points can be a useful reminder if you need to look back over the main features of the course.The final sections of the course summarise the important design considerations needed to create original and attractive gardens, and demonstrate how to find and record inspiration for your designs.This course has been written for anyone who wants to learn the skills and techniques of how to design original and beautiful gardens. You may be someone who wants to know how to design your own garden, or someone who is interested in starting a career in garden design, or a student studying garden design. Or you may be working as a gardener, a garden contractor, a garden designer or a landscape architect.For all these people and anyone simply interested in garden design, this course progresses from the essential baseline skills, to more advanced techniques which will be demonstrated in the design of gardens of increasing complexityThis course is the third in this series of four courses under the heading of ‘The Complete Garden Design Course’. Taken together these four courses will give you a thorough grounding in the art of garden design so that by the end you will have learnt all the skills you will need to undertake your own garden design projects. However, while this course on How to Design often refers back the earlier two courses, it can also be studied as a stand-alone course. A list of drawing equipment introduced in the earlier Drawing Techniques course and which will be needed to complete the design exercises is provided at start of Section 2 of the course.

Overview

Section 1: Garden Spaces and Features

Lecture 1 Introduction

Lecture 2 Exercise 1: Garden Spaces

Lecture 3 Exercise 2: Garden Features

Section 2: A Small Back Garden

Lecture 4 Introduction

Lecture 5 Exercise 3: Experimenting with Squares

Lecture 6 Creating a Garden Layout, Setting Up

Lecture 7 Creating a Garden Layout, Developing a Composition

Lecture 8 Creating a Garden Layout, The Completed Garden

Lecture 9 Creating a Garden Layout, Recap

Lecture 10 Levels of Enclosure

Lecture 11 Exercise 4: Creating a Garden Layout

Section 3: A Large Back Garden

Lecture 12 Introduction

Lecture 13 Creating a Garden Layout: Introduction

Lecture 14 Creating a Garden Layout: Stage 1

Lecture 15 Creating a Garden Layout: Stage 1 Continued

Lecture 16 Creating a Garden Layout: Stage 1 Recap

Lecture 17 Creating a Garden Layout: Stage 2

Lecture 18 Creating a Garden Layout: Stage 3

Lecture 19 Creating a Garden Layout: Stage 4

Lecture 20 Creating a Garden Layout: Stage 4 Continued

Lecture 21 Creating a Presentation Standard Drawing

Lecture 22 Achieving the Design Aims

Lecture 23 Exercise 5: Creating Your Own Design

Section 4: A Courtyard Garden

Lecture 24 Introduction

Lecture 25 Changes in Level in Small Gardens

Lecture 26 Examples of Exploratory Sketches

Lecture 27 Design Demonstration: Stage 1

Lecture 28 Design Demonstration: Stage 2

Lecture 29 Design Demonstration: Stage 3

Lecture 30 Design Demonstration: Stage 4

Lecture 31 Design Demonstration: Stage 5

Lecture 32 Design Demonstration: Stage 6

Lecture 33 Review of Design Stages

Lecture 34 Design Appraisal and Exercise 6

Section 5: A Garden That Flows

Lecture 35 Introduction

Lecture 36 Appraising the Existing Garden: Exercise 7

Lecture 37 Free-Form Sketching: Exercise 8

Lecture 38 Design Demonstration: 1st Iteration

Lecture 39 Design Demonstration: 2nd and 3rd Iteration

Lecture 40 Design Demonstration: 4th and 5th Iterations

Lecture 41 Design Demonstration: 6th and 7th Iteration and Final Design

Lecture 42 Review of Design Stages

Lecture 43 Appraising the Final Design

Lecture 44 Exercise 9: Creating Your Own Garden That Flows

Section 6: Circles and Arcs

Lecture 45 Introduction

Lecture 46 Arrangements of Circles and Arcs

Lecture 47 Exercise 10: Creating Compositions of Circles and Arcs

Lecture 48 Exercise 11: Visualising a Garden Design

Lecture 49 Designing a Garden Using Circles and Arcs: Stage 1

Lecture 50 Designing a Garden Using Circles and Arcs: Stage 2

Lecture 51 Designing a Garden Using Circles and Arcs: Stage 3

Lecture 52 Designing a Garden Using Circles and Arcs: Stage 4

Lecture 53 Designing a Garden Using Circles and Arcs: Stage 5

Lecture 54 Designing a Garden Using Circles and Arcs: Stage 6, Exercise 12

Section 7: An Irregularly Shaped Garden

Lecture 55 Exercise 13

Section 8: Recap on Design Considerations

Lecture 56 Design Considerations 1 and 2

Lecture 57 Design Considerations 3 and 4

Lecture 58 Design Considerations 5 and 6

Lecture 59 Design Considerations 7, 8 and 9

Section 9: Design Inspiration

Lecture 60 Sources of Design Inspiration

Lecture 61 Goodbye!

This course has been written for anyone who wants to learn the skills and techniques of how to design original and beautiful gardens.