Design Your Own Garden

Whether you're starting from scratch with a new garden, planning a major overhaul of your existing garden or just hoping to get some of the ideas in your head down on paper, this course will guide you through the main stages of drawing up - and taking forward - your garden design. A friendly and informal course which is also informative, practical and full of useful details and techniques.

Over five weeks, we'll take you through measuring and surveying your (or someone else’s) space, drawing up an outline plan to scale, exploring concepts and ideas for your garden, and getting to work on landscaping and planting plans. You'll leave with a set of basic scale plans to work from immediately or build on over the coming years, whether you plan to create the garden yourself, design for other people or hand over to a landscaper or gardener to create it for you. And you'll have the skills and knowledge to draw up future garden plans yourself, whether you're just interested in adding to your garden skills or considering a career change.

The course will be led by our Director of Studies Dr Mima Taylor who will guide you in developing your drawings and plans week-by-week while also weaving in information sessions on key design concepts and principles.  We'll also look at the practical and budgetary challenges you'll need to expect and plan for with a new garden design, and look at other considerations including seasonal planting, wildlife and sustainability, focusing on ways these impact on the London garden.

Open to all levels: this course is designed to help you come up with your own practical, usable designs for a garden of your choice regardless of whether you are starting from the very beginning with your first garden or are already an advanced gardener or confident artist.

You'll need to have a garden to work on although it doesn't have to be your own and can even be a public or community garden if you are just interested in learning the skills in preparation for a future garden or career change. There will be assignments between classes which will require access to the garden each week (measuring, appraisal, photographing etc). You will need to have time (1-3 hours each week, depending on the size of your garden and how much detail you want to go into) to complete these ‘homework’ tasks in order to have the information ready for the in-lesson practical tasks each week.