Fundamentals of Garden Design
What you'll learn
- Students will learn how to prepare a conceptual landscape plan suitable for themselves or presentation
- You will learn how to do a simple site survey of a property and plot it on paper
- How to use different design approaches to give more interest and continuity to your designs
- You will learn how the Planes of Enclosure can make your designs more interesting and dynamic
- You will be shown how to color your plan for presentation and display
- You will have access to bid sheets and examples of contracts for you to use in business and estimating
Requirements
- The student should have basic math skills
Description
This is a beginner/intermediate level course in landscape Architecture and Design.
Landscape design is more than selecting plants for a project, it is the integration of all the elements and spaces that affect our outdoor living environment. In this course you will be introduced to the objectives and principles that are essential to developing a strong design solution for either yourself or for a paying client, all the while you'll be introduced to new garden and design ideas to help grow your design company. With lessons covering how to interview the client, design contracts, form composition and selecting a design approach this course is a comprehensive and in-depth journey into the world of truly creative landscape design.
Because I have students taking this course from all over the world with a wide range of climates and plant palettes this is NOT a course on planting design. The basic concepts of how plants can be used within the landscape are discussed, but individual plant species and their use or placement will not be addressed.
The practical skills of drafting to scale, and site surveys will be explained. Finally, how to take these skills, draw your garden design and create a conceptual garden plan for yourself, family or client will be covered in detail.
For those of you working in metric, you'll want to jump straight down to Lecture 75 for a lesson on using the metric scale in design.
This is a course on garden design - not gardening. It is also NOT a course using computer aided design (CAD). The instruction will be in using pen, ink and paper - what I believe is the starting point for all design even if you choose to use a computer program later on. CAD is simply a tool, but if you do not know the basic principles and objectives of design, CAD won't help you. You'll simply do poor designs faster!
The conceptual plan is the starting point for any design project, opening discussion and refining the plan before construction drawings are prepared and it is this approach to design that I will be explaining, demonstrating and clarifying for the student.
What you will get out of this course:
74 lectures walking you through the entire process of creating a conceptual garden plan including garden design basics
Approximately 7 hours of instruction
Lifetime access to the instructor for advice, plan critique, contract review and encouragement
Lifetime access to the course and resources
30-day, money back guarantee
Certificate of Completion when you've finished the Course
Pure and practical advice
Personal guidance and mentoring from someone (me!) who has been designing and creating gardens for over 35 years
Who this course is for:
- This course is for gardeners, landscape contractors, designers and students interested in improving their design capabilities. This course has been developed for those interested in learning landscape design including site surveys and basic differential elevation surveys.
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Instructor
- 4.6 Instructor Rating
- 3,295 Reviews
- 14,300 Students
- 6 Courses
Robert Littlepage, as his many former students can attest, is a dynamic instructor who brings real-world experience and a touch of humor to his teaching style. His love of teaching and enthusiasm for his topic is a source of inspiration to his students. Mr. Littlepage founded the California School of Garden Design in 1998 to fill a much-needed void. He discovered that other than two-year junior college programs and a few correspondence courses, there was no place in the United States where someone interested in becoming a garden designer could learn these skills quickly and at minimum expense. Rob created the School to provide an opportunity for those individuals to learn necessary skills and to become proficient in Garden Design in a short but intensive period of time. This has lead to his now offering on-line classes through Udemy.
Rob began his career as a forester and a licensed landscape contractor and has had his own design practice for over 34 years, creating gardens for clients throughout California and the surrounding states. His designs have been featured in garden design books and won awards at numerous shows. He studied garden design in England in 1994. Rob previously taught landscape and irrigation design at Sierra College in Rocklin, California and at the Placer Adult School in Auburn, but decided to open his own garden design school. Landscape designer David Stevens, of David Stevens International has collaborated with Rob to present design classes in the United States and wrote the forward to Rob's latest book "Fundamentals of Garden Design" which is a complement to his course on landscape design.
He is a licensed landscape architect in California (#5674) and Louisiana (L-249 - retired). He is a Qualified Water Efficient Landscaper (QWEL) an EPA WaterSense Partner and is a certified landscape irrigation auditor.