One of the things said most often by people interested in a career in garden design is: “I’d like to be a designer but I’m hopeless at drawing”. Little do they realise that they are putting in place an obstacle that doesn’t really exist. Firstly, our students come from all walks of life – teaching, commerce, agriculture, IT - and hardly any have any previous training or experience in the graphic arts. Secondly, the whole point of taking a professional qualification like our Diploma is that we teach the drawing skills from scratch: if you can pick up a pen we can teach you to draw!

As if to prove the point, on this page we show examples of design work completed by students who have taken our Diploma Course in the past few years. Our thanks go to Bruce Dorey (2005), Helen Prestedge (2004), Tony Wright (2005), Andrew Stevenson (2004), Katerina Angliss (2006), Kate Poore (2006) and Eliza Gray (2006) for allowing us to show work from their final projects. Details of their websites (where applicable) appear at the bottom of this page.

Outline Plans

Producing a two-dimensional plan of a garden is one of the first and most important drawing techniques taught on the GDS Diploma Course. These plans all show practical, sustainable family gardens and are drawn to scale with lots of interesting and imaginative examples of hard and soft landscaping. All of the gardens have entertaining/relaxation spaces and childrens’ play areas. Also included are water features, tree houses, pergolas, fruit and vegetable plots, herb gardens and areas devoted to wildlife.

Please click on images to enlarge.

Perspective and Axonometric Drawings and Projections
(see images below, top row and bottom row, left)

Having tackled outline plans, all GDS students are taught how to produce these three dimensional freehand drawings. They are very useful when trying to convey the relative shape, size and mass of trees, shrubs and the other structural elements in a garden (which some people find difficult to visualise in 2D form).

Construction Drawings
(see images below, bottom row, middle and right)

Our Diploma Course includes a comprehensive section on construction drawings because they are essential in explaining exactly how specific aspects of a garden should be created. They show in precise detail how features such as gates, fences, walls, steps, patios, driveways, ponds and pergolas should be built and are therefore of vital importance to garden and landscape contractors.