From  town to country garden (From 300 – 3000 square meters/yards in area), this course is a unique opportunity to design your own garden under the watchful eye of one of the world’s most famous landscape and garden designers. Following the same syllabus as his other Mygardenschool course, the big difference is you get to work on your own garden and get John Brookes’ (MBE) expert input and assistance with its layout and design. You are essentially working with John, and will be able to claim that you’ve certainly had input on your garden design from one of the world’s most prestigious landscape designers!

This on-line garden design course is suitable for amateurs and professionals alike. In it, I give you my personal insight on how to design your own garden with design rules applying to any country in the world and any size of garden (you’ll get personal tuition from me in the MyGardenSchool virtual classroom). With over 50 years design and teaching experience and over 30 books published in as many different languages, I draw on my extensive knowledge to combine clever and stylish design options with detailed information and practical advice.

Please join me so I can share with you, my design philosophy, never before explained or revealed in such detail.

Learning outcome: Having completed this course you will have a garden plan of your own large garden which you have designed, with the help and assistance of one  of the most famous designers of the 20 century.

Week 1: Garden Style and Surveying your Site.   Understanding the proportions of your garden, making a site assessment, how to do a simple survey

Week 2: Design Secrets only the Pros Know.   There is no way around this; I am going to have to talk ‘design’ for a moment.  And why not? we all crave the designer kitchen, the designer bedroom en suite if I am to believe my tele – so why not the designer garden?  I'll teach you the approach used by the professionals to achieve your designer garden

Week 3: Line Pattern & Shape.  This lecture covers, A bit of design theory, Direction of Flow, The formal layout, An anticlockwise design, A clockwise design, Starting to evolve your own pattern, Using circles, The Garden Plan

Week 4: Turning Dreams into Reality.  Implementing the rule of thirds, the design as you move away from the house, and finally the planting

You will require a scanner or local printer where you can have your drawings digitally scanned

You may require a site survey to be carried out by a professional land survey or qualified landscape contractor/designer if you are unable to survey your own plot

Having a reasonably acurate scale drawing of your house and boundary is necessary in order to complete this course.

For further information and instruction please see

http://gardendesigncourses.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/how-to-survey-garden-pt1.html

and

http://gardendesigncourses.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/how-to-survey-garden-pt2.html

Materials/Equipment Required:

Thick black marker pen (Water Based)

Graphite sticks 4B

Pencils HB 2B

Pencil sharpener

Large compass with extension bar and ink pen attachment Approx. 20cm diameter without extension (don't forget extension bar and ink pen attachment)

Large adjustable set square

This is a triangle of clear plastic used for vertical and diagonal line drawing when rested on the edge of the drawing board. Sizes vary enormously - do not buy the smallest size or you will have trouble drawing long vertical lines. The length of the longest side should be around 250-3OOmm (10-12"). When you do your final drawing in ink, make sure you buy your set squares with angled edges that eliminate smudging.

Scale rule

A scale rule (or scale either metric or imperial depending on country of origin) is a narrow strip of plastic the length of a normal ruler and either flat or triangular in shape. It has varying numbers of divisions along each edge on both sides. The divisions are in proportion to actual distances and dimensions and are used for making plans drawn to scale. The scales you will most often use are 1:20,1:50,1:100,1:200 but you will probably find that most scale rules go up to at least 1:12

25m role of 60g tracing paper

Circular template (HELIX H67)

Roll of masking tape

Optional extra - Drawing board - A1 with parallel motion.

Additional information can be obtained from the following link http://www.garden-design-courses.co.uk/booklist/equipment.htm