Simplified Grading for Garden Designers
What you'll learn
- In this course you will learn the basics of contour manipulation and how to create a simple grading plan for your landscape design
- You will learn how to use the Slope Formula to show proposed contours and create useable space in your designs
- You will complete exercises using this same Slope Formula to control and direct drainage in your designs
- Demonstrate how to convey 3D concepts on a 2D sheet of paper
- You will learn how to use Ratios rather than Slope Formula to speed up the creation of proposed contours and create a simple grading plan
- You will work with exercises in Imperial, Engineering and Metric scales to demonstrate your skills and capabilities to solve grading problems
Requirements
- You should have a basic understanding of math and simple algebra and how to read a scale rule. We'll be working in architectural, engineering and metric scales, with a concentration on the engineers and metric scale rule.
Description
This is a beginners course on understanding elevations and contours and how they impact garden design. Having an understanding of how to work with slopes and uneven ground will give your designs more interest and open doors to your own creativity. It will enable you to convey, discuss and explain your ideas to a much fuller extent to clients, family and landscape contractors - it will give you a starting point to talk with confidence about your ideas.
We'll begin with the basic concept of contours and topographic maps, watersheds and simple contour manipulation. This course is filled with exercises that will grow more complex as you move deeper into the different Sections. By the end of this course you'll have a much better understanding of contours and how to use different elevations to your advantage. The last Section will cover field procedures for when you want to survey and create your own contour map of a site and build your design onto it. Overall, this is a practical course in simplified grading for garden designers, contractors and homeowners.
WHAT THIS COURSE IS NOT: This is not a course in engineering. While the methods and concepts are basically the same you will need to realize your own limits and when you should hire professional help from surveyors, engineers and general contractors.
Who this course is for:
- Garden designers and design/build landscape contractors will benefit from this course. Homeowners will also benefit if you are looking to design/build a patio or have some drainage issues.
- This course has been created using Imperial, Engineering and Metric scale values. Regardless of where you live or work this course will help you to create more interesting and diverse gardens and explain your solutions to homeowners and contractors.
Instructor
- 4.6 Instructor Rating
- 789 Reviews
- 24,364 Students
- 12 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.