This three day course is a sequel to An Introduction to Designing with Plants although both courses can be taken independently.
However, if you’re a budding garden designer or someone who is keen to take their creativity with plants to another level this course looks at the more advanced planting design principles of seasonality and layering.
So many of us, and our clients, want to see plenty of colour and texture year round, but how do we achieve this while also maintaining a fulsome and varied aesthetic? In this course we look at the composition of planting designs as carefully orchestrated displays of concurrent, overlapping and sequential flushes of interest and study ways in which we can use transparent drawings, seasonal calendars and quick elevations to explore, refine and present our ideas.
We also spend time understanding through practical exercises the ways in which plants can be spaced and distributed through a planting bed and through the garden as a whole to create layers of seasonal interest, capitalising on the sociability of species.
By studying planting plans by, among others, Tom Stuart Smith, Piet Oudolf and AWB Associates we will learn how plants can be interwoven in planned layers both as swathes and drifts and as informal scatterings. At the end of this course you will be more confident when planning more advanced planting schemes, with an increased repertoire of drawing techniques at your disposal.
A modicum of plant knowledge is required for this course as it has been created for those who wish to take their existing skills up a notch. A list of what you need to bring will be issued on receipt of a booking, although plenty of paper will be available for you in the studio. You will have special access to the YSGD book library as well as our large format plotter for scanning, saving and printing out your work if you wish. Free tea and coffee will be available through the day in the teaching studio, and we ask that folks bring lunch with them each day or walk to one of the many nearby shops in Ripon to buy lunch.
We are limiting the class size to 12 on this course, to make sure all students get plenty of tutor feedback during practical exercises. We’re anticipating that this will be a popular course, so please book early to avoid disappointment. Payment in full is required to reserve your place on this course. Please refer to our Terms and Conditions here for information on cancellations and refunds.
Before booking on this course please check out our short course home page for our Learn and Save deals on two or more courses – the more you book the more you save!
If you would like to book accommodation nearby, please get in touch and we can send you some recommendations.