A garden designer is someone who designs the plan and features of

garden A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is ''control''. The garden can incorporate bot ...

s, either as an amateur or professional. The compositional elements of garden design and

landscape design Landscape design is an independent profession and a design and art tradition, practiced by landscape designers, combining nature and culture. In contemporary practice, landscape design bridges the space between landscape architecture and gard ...

are:

terrain Terrain or relief (also topographical relief) involves the vertical and horizontal dimensions of land surface. The term bathymetry is used to describe underwater relief, while hypsometry studies terrain relative to sea level. The Latin w ...

water Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as ...

, planting, constructed elements and buildings, paving, site characteristics and genius loci, and the local climatic qualities.

Services

Garden designers are skilled specialists dealing with master planning of

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

s and design of gardens, consulting with advice for clients, providing direction and supervision during construction, and the management of establishment and maintenance once the garden has been created. They are able to survey the site, and prepare drawings for the development of a garden from concepts to construction, and source the plant and building materials. Historically, many gardens have been designed by talented amateurs without formal training, and many others have been designed by people whose artistic or design training was not originally focused on gardens. The complexities in contemporary environmental design issues and technology increase the scope professional garden designers fill.

Methods

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", "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 The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

gardens were drawn on paper and that modern gardens are drawn on a computer. The design process always has an influence on the design product. There tends to be a distinction between those designers who start with the plant palette and its needs, called garden design; and those designers who begin with consideration of the space and place-making to create architectural spaces and circulation routes with plants and other elements, called

. Many famous gardens which contain myriad interesting plants can be incompletely planned as a whole and lack integrated composition. Also, many gardens which are well planned in overall design can lack the interests from planting detail. Some keen gardeners who are very knowledgeable about plants can be resistant to conceptualizing design. Some very competent designers and landscape architects have a meager amount of diverse botanical and

horticultural Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

knowledge and experience. A competent and talented garden designer can synthesize both needs to design and create beautiful and sustainable landscapes and gardens.

Garden design education

Historically, garden designers were trained under the apprentice system, such as

André Le Nôtre André Le Nôtre (; 12 March 1613 – 15 September 1700), originally rendered as André Le Nostre, was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France , house = Bourbon , father = Lo ...

with his father and Beatrix Farrand with

Charles Sprague Sargent Charles Sprague Sargent (April 24, 1841 – March 22, 1927) was an American botanist. He was appointed in 1872 as the first director of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts, and held the post until his death. He p ...

. Specialist university-level landscape planning and garden design courses were established in the twentieth century, generally attached to departments of

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled peop ...

, horticulture, or

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings ...

. In the second half of the twentieth century many of these courses changed their scale of focus and their nomenclature, from garden design to

landscape architecture Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioural, or aesthetic outcomes. It involves the systematic design and general engineering of various structures for constructio ...

. Towards the end of the twentieth century a number of BA garden design curricula were established with the emphasis more on design than horticulture. Horticultural colleges, in ornamental horticulture departments, and architecture colleges, in landscape architecture departments, continue to train contemporary garden designers.

Notable garden designers

* Chris Beardshaw * Adam Frost * Diarmuid Gavin * Dominique Girard * Geoffrey Jellicoe * Lawrence Johnston * William Martin * Shunmyō Masuno * Russell Page * Dan Pearson * James Russell * Diego Suarez * Hirofumi Suga * Joe Swift * Roger Turner * Andrew Wilson * Emma Clark

References

Additional sources