Whether you have a generous swathe of garden or a tiny outdoor plot, there’s a certain skill to making the best of your green space. And with a wide range of inspiring expert-led courses out there, you’ll find plenty of options to get you started – or to take your skills to the next level.
For beginners in the field, you can take your pick from any number of options. West Dean’s four-day Designing Your Own Garden course (£452) is a good start, aimed at enthusiastic amateur gardeners who either have a new garden with nothing in it, or an established garden in need of changes. Taking place at the college in Sussex, there are also residential options available. A shorter, one-day Experience Garden Design programme (£200) in London is another option if you can’t commit to several days.
The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) also has a programme of courses, lectures and workshops, often based at their Wisley site in Surrey, and many of these offer a grounding in everything from the basics of design to the techniques of drawing up garden designs.
If you’re not based in the south east, but want to do a course in person, it’s worth checking with your local adult education services and nearest botanic gardens as beginner garden-design courses are widely available through both channels – but if you’d prefer to learn from home, online beginner courses make for a perfect alternative.
Learning with Experts has a good range, from Alison Worster’s Introduction to Garden Design (from £85) to Design & Create your Dream Country Garden (from £45). Create Academy is another good call for online courses, and Dan Pearson’s Naturalistic Garden Design Masterclass (£147) will build participants’ confidence and skills to plan and maintain an outdoor space of any size.
For those who are already seasoned gardeners, a more advanced course could take your skills to the next level – or even prepare you for a professional career. The renowned Inchbald School of Design is a brilliant option for anyone who’s serious about learning garden design and wants an in-depth course.
While its 13-week Design Your Own Garden course (£1,260) offers a wide-ranging starting point, there are also options for a year-long Diploma in Garden Design (£30,500), providing a foundation for anyone seeking a career in this arena, as well as a BA (Hons) in Garden Design (£45,300), which offers a professionally validated accreditation for aspiring designers.
And if you’re not seeking a career, or you’re au fait with the basics, perhaps you have a specific garden design subject you want to explore further – in which case, take a look at a more focused design course, from West Dean’s offerings Creating a Drought-Tolerant Garden (£153) to courses from Learning with Experts on Gardening for Wildlife (from £45) and Designing Small Gardens (from £215).