The New Fundamentals of Garden Design 2025

The New Fundamentals of Garden Design 2025 free download

Garden design is more than simply selecting plants. Learn how to combine elements and spaces within the garden.

This is a beginner level course in landscape architecture and design and is an updated version of my original Fundamentals of Garden Design.  This course has been streamlined, with some content removed from the original course as it became obvious to me that slowed the pace of instruction.

This class will focus on hand-drafting.  If you are not familiar with drafting using pencil, pen and ink then I recommend taking my FREE course on the Fundamentals of Hand Drafting.

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 as a designer. With lessons covering form composition, design approach, design principles and more, this course is a comprehensive 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 plotting a site survey 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.

Drafting to scale will be covered for both Imperial and Metric scales.

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:

20+ lessons will walk you through the entire process of creating a conceptual garden plan including garden design basics

Pure and practical advice. A bullet list of recommended supplies is attached within the Resources for this course.