What will I learn on the Flower Border Design course?
The course covers everything from garden history to plant analysis, from the principles of visual composition to design documentation and legislation. Here’s a broad overview:
- Plants as a medium for design – Using form, texture and colour theories over a range of styles and settings.
- The art of combining plants – Analysis of planting styles used by today’s leading designers, plus an exploration of styles used by the greatest plantsmen and women of the 20th and 21st centuries.
- Hardiness, growing requirements, seasonality – The relationship between plants and their optimum living environments, plant physiology, form and structure.
- Planting styles – Clashing colours or tonal harmony, naturalistic style or modern simplicity. How to create planting combinations that truly inspire and connect people with their garden.
Planting Design Diploma full curriculum
Plants as a medium for design
You’ll learn how to select and use plants as 3D space, using aesthetic and functional considerations. We’ll cover balance, harmony and contrast, emphasis, access and scale.
Visual properties of plants
Plant form, flower form, texture, habit and colour.
Plant selection
This module covers plant identification and naming along with style, mood and theme . We’ll also cover site analysis, soil biology, plant roles and growth, and plant structure. The module covers trees, shrubs, herbaceous, bulbs, ferns, grasses and roses.
Plants and their environment
Plant communities, designing with canopy layers, design interpretation and different plant associations. We’ll be looking at growth requirements, mode of spread, habits, longevity and lifecycles.
Flower border styles
The mixed border, herbaceous border, naturalistic planting, Mediterranean planting, shade planting, cottage gardens, meadow planting, low maintenance planting, water and bog, tropical planting and container gardening.
Flower border virtuosos
An analysis of plant styles, and exclusive lectures by some of the world’s greatest garden designers – Piet Oudolf, Dan Pearson, Tom Stuart Smith, Scot Ogden, Orme & van Sweden, Fergus Garret, John Brookes, Gilles Clément, Beth Chatto, Nigel Dunnett, Thomas Rainer and Paul Thompson.
Flower border business
This module arms you with valuable knowledge about the business itself. We’ll cover briefing and client relations, gardens and the law, nurseries (both trade and retail), maintenance, plant schedules and specifications.
Planting plans
Starting with the survey and preliminaries, we’ll move on to the organisation of ideas, design concepts, schematic planting design, graphical styles and scales. We’ll also cover planting nomenclature and presentation.
Ornamental planting
The layout of the planting area, planting arrangement and planting patterns. We’ll look at canopy layers, succession growth, accents, composition and scale. We’ll also cover ecological planting, plant spacing, setting out and plant supports.
