Finding Inspiration and Creativity for Garden Designs – Garden Design course

Garden Design course – Finding Inspiration and Creativity for Garden Designs.

Aimed at budding Garden Design Students and Fully Bloomed Garden Designers

Stuck for Ideas for Garden Design? This 2-day garden design course is aimed at students who want to explore ways to nurture and inspire their creativity. Whether you are a budding garden design student or a practicing garden designer, Katrina, a London Garden Designer, uses the knowledge she gained from her art degree and years of garden design to teach techniques and strategies for finding inspiration from the world of art and design. The course comprises an introduction, which is completed online, followed by two days visiting some of London’s iconic art and design institutions to learn how to place design styles in their context and create a scrapbook of ideas. You can view some of our previous garden design presentations.

Day One (10am – 6pm) – Meet for coffee at the Tate Modern (or other modern art gallery) in London to discuss our views on art and gain an understanding of the depth of our knowledge of art. We look at how we can draw inspiration from art pieces even if we don’t like the art piece itself. We will then walk through the galleries looking at different art movements and briefly exploring the social, political and historical context that may have influenced them at the time. Once we have gained an overview of modern art, we will select 5 pieces of art from different eras/movements, and from these try to find inspiration to transpose into a garden design. We explore shapes, texture, colour, proportion, composition, perspective, context, relationship with viewer and emotional response and try to align modern art techniques with the components that help create great garden designs.

Day Two (10am – 5pm) – We head to the Victoria and Albert Museum to explore 3 galleries. The first is the 20th Century gallery, the remaining two will be chosen by the students on Day One. In the 20th Century gallery we will select one object from each 20 year period and use that object as a basis for our garden sketches. In the other two galleries the students will select an object for each other – we then pick a stranger walking round the gallery, make some assumptions about their life and personality, and design a garden as if they were the client.

All work is documented and archived and we encourage you to develop it into usable content for portfolio and web-based projects.

Some comments from past students:-

“Thanks to our fantastic teacher, Katrina. She is just wonderful!! We have been to her open day, to different drawing courses and her “website course”. The last course we came to was the creative session. We just love her and thanks to her our business is doing great here in Norway.” – Kari Mette

“I have been a garden designer for 5 years, but sometimes get artist’s block. This is a great motivator, to remind myself that I can be creative in my gardens and it helped me to connect to the artist within me that had lain dormant for a few years.” – Janet, 2010

“Inspirational, Intelligent, Invaluable – if you go to this course you will never be short of ideas. This course is exactly what I was looking for.” – Mike, 2010

I loved the course – especially our visit to Tate Modern. Using art to inspire my garden designs is a new approach for me. I’m extremely pleased with my later results – and totally convinced that it is possible to produce a high quality concept drawing using this method. Previously I’ve done the site survey and scale drawing of the lay-out before producing drafts for discussion with my clients. I’m definitely going to scrap that approach and save valuable time. Thanks, Katrina, for sharing your approach. I found it extremely rewarding and can see how it leads both to a garden that ‘works’ and to one that is personal to the client. I highly recommend Earth Designs’ courses to any practising or aspiring garden designer. Truly inspiring. Joan 2010

After spending three days with Katrina on the Earth Designs course, I now feel more inspired than ever to continue to grow my own successful garden design company. It was so inspirational to get back to the basics of design & be inspired by some iconic pieces of modern art & translate them into wonderful outdoor spaces, by pushing the boundaries in terms of colour & use of materials. Sarah 2011

Having recently done Katrina’s 3D drawing course and also the ‘Can you teach me to be creative’ day course, I cannot recommend her highly enough! She has a huge depth of knowledge in design and has made me approach designing a garden in a new and exciting way. Katrina has the patience of a saint! I now know my way around Sketch Up and am able to produce 3D drawing. I was already a massive fan of Earth designs work and was very excited about meeting Katrina. She did not disappoint! – Kirsteen 2012

The course costs £300 for 2 days, plus half day study at home. 2 students maximum per course. Accommodation is not included. For more information or to enquire about dates, please contact info@earthdesigns.co.uk See below for our full list of Short Garden Design Courses .

Introduction to being a Garden Designer
Finding Inspiration and Creativity for Garden Designs.
Google Sketch Up for Garden Designers
Garden Specification Writing for Garden Designers