Garden designer

The term

Garden Designers are skilled specialists dealing with design of landscapes and garden areas, offering advice, providing supervision during construction, and management or after-care once the garden has been made. They are able to survey the site, source the materials, and prepare drawings for the development of a garden from start to finish. Historically, most gardens have been designed by untrained amateurs and many have been designed by people whose design training was not originally in the design of gardens.

A wide range of design methods have been used by garden designers, depending partly on the historical period in which they worked and partly on the professional discipline with which they have the closest relationship. One can, for example, speak of an 'architect's garden' an 'artist's garden' or a 'plantsman's garden'. Treating the subject historically, one can say that ancient gardens were likely to have been 'drawn' directly on the ground, that Renaissance gardens were drawn on paper and that modern gardens are 'drawn' on a computer screen. The design process always has an influence on the design product.

There tends to be a divide between designers who start with the plants, on the one hand, and designers who think in terms of routes, architectural spaces and making the garden work sensibly, on the other. Very many famous gardens which are full of interesting plants are actually very badly laid out. On the other hand many gardens which are well laid out have a sad lack of interesting planting in detail. Many keen gardeners who are very knowledgeable about plants are very resistant to the concept of design. Many very competent designers and landscape architects have a woeful lack of plant knowledge. One of the few attempts to address this issue is made in a book called "Design in the Plant Collector's Garden," by Roger Turner, published by Timber Press.

Garden design education

Traditionally, garden designers were trained under the apprentice system. Specialist university-level garden design courses were established in the twentieth century, generally attached to departments of agriculture or horticulture. In the second half of the twentieth century many of these courses changed their name, and their focus, from garden design to landscape architecture. Towards the end of the twentieth century a number of BA Garden Design courses were established with the emphasis on design rather than horticulture. But horticultural colleges continue to train garden designers.

ee also

*Garden design
*History of gardening
*History of landscape architecture
*List of gardening topics
* [http://www.ukgardenoffices.co.uk/ Garden Offices] Information related to Garden Offices Studios Timber Garden Buildings.

Books

* Sylvia Crowe, "Garden Design" Antique Collector's Club, 2003.
* Marie-Luise Gothein "A history of garden art" (English edition, 1928)
* Tom Turner, "Garden history philosophy and design 2000 BC to 2000AD" (Spon Press, 2005)
* Roger Turner, "Better Garden Design", Batsford, 1986