How Art, the Devil and Gardens go Hand in Hand.

Once a year I take my students to the Tate Modern gallery in London. As part of their course they have to complete a pictorial timeline, comparing art , architecture, gardens, & Socio-economic influences, using thumbnail pictures to create visual links between each category.

This isn’t just another academic exercise. It has real world use for students, enabling them to understand what has gone on in the past and so allowing them to move into the future.

We teach contemporary design at the Oxford College of Garden Design, but it could be argued that a designer should be able to turn their hand to any style, in any period of history, provided they understand the principles of 3 dimensional special design.

Pergola or Sculpture or Both?

Yes, this exercise helps students put into context how each of the four categories influences the other, but it does more than this. It introduces us (some for the first time) to the concept of art as a major influencing factor in all aspects of our lives.

Initially, I get the students to attend under the pretext of seeing the art, not just as a photo in a book, but as it was supposed to be seen, in context, life size and in the flesh.

I get them to sketch, not to improve their drawing skills, but to improve their ability to see.

This week is the students last critique before they present their Project 1to the clients. It’s no accident that the Tate visit co-insides with this.

Having fulfilled the client brief, this is their last chance to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. This is where an average design can become a gold medal winning garden.

I mentions USP’s in an earlier blog but can’t stress enough how important detail is to successful design. It’s at this point in the course that I start to hammer in the mantra ‘the devils in the detail’

The drawings made at the Tate, now become the next design exercise. Weather they become garden floor plans like John Brookes penguin book garden, or landscape drawing or garden sculpture or even bespoke furniture . It doesn’t really matter what they do, so long as they start to think outside of the box. Even if they don’t all get it immediately, some way down the road I hope they all become free thinking, conceptual designers, able to see the potential in the mundane and the extraordinary in the ordinary.

The reason the Oxford College of Garden Design produces the UK’s top design students is because we see garden design, not as a horticultural subject but as art and I believe art and life go hand in hand.

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Students Win Garden Design Competition at the Southport Flower Show

Oxford College of Garden Design

PRESS RELEASE May 2010

It has just been announced that students from the Oxford College of Garden Design have won the prestigious 2010 Student Garden Design Competition of the Southport Flower Show, to be held from 19 to 22 August in Merseyside. Alexandra Lehne and Lea Maravic (shown above) are currently studying for the postgraduate level Diploma in Residential Garden Design at the Oxford College of Garden Design.

Alexandra and Lea have won a £6,000 commission to build their winning design at the show and received excellent feedback on their garden, which the organisers have described as “one of the best entries ever submitted into the competition!”

Download full plans and details here

The brief was to design a garden based on the Show’s theme of “Coast”, in a 6m x 6m square plot and Alex and Lea’s winning submission included a detailed scale plan, planting plan, scale drawings and illustration (as per example above).

The postgraduate level Diploma in Residential Garden Design offered by the Oxford College of Garden Design is widely regarded as one of the leading garden design courses in the world. Held at St Hugh’s College Oxford, which is set in 14 acres of beautiful landscaped gardens, applications are currently being taken for the next 1 year fast-track course which starts on 30^th September 2010. The world’s first interactive online garden design course has also been launched by the College to run alongside the full time course. To find out more visit:

www.garden-design-courses.co.uk or telephone 01491 628950 for further information.

Oxford College of Garden Design

The College was set up by Duncan Heather in 1992 and has attracted students from around the world, including America, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the UK. Duncan Heather is one of Europe’s foremost garden designers. Duncan was trained by Britain’s best-loved octogenarian designer and garden writer, John Brookes OBE, whom many regard as one of the world’s top garden designers of the 20th Century. In a career now spanning over 30 years, Duncan has won five gold medals, one silver, one bronze and three awards for innovative design.

FOR FURTHER MEDIA INFORMATION

INCLUDING INTERVIEWS AND HI-RES IMAGES PLEASE CONTACT:

GM-PR georgina@gm-pr.co.uk 020 8546 0013

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Would you be a better Landscape Designer if you were Dyslexic?

Like most people who find something difficult, I dislike writing intensely, but with my job, it’s an inevitability that has to be endured.

I must confess to being very Dyslexic.  I can’t spell for toffee; never could; and probably never will!

So why  am I so grateful to be dyslexic  and why would that make me a better designer?

First you have to ask your self, are you a left or right-brain person?

As an artist, you might think right, if you're an accountant, you might think left.

In reality, it's not really an either/or situation. Because each half of the brain tends to control certain kinds of thinking, its easy to categorise people as either one or the other.

Left Brain characteristics tend to be, Logical Sequential, Rational, Analytical, Objective.

While Right Brainers’ are considered Random Intuitive, Synthesizing, Subjective and Holistic

But while some people tend to use one side of the brain more than the other, the reality is that the two sides are dynamic and interactive.

When most of you are thinking and learning at your peak, you use your whole brain, switching freely between the halves.  Dyslexics however tend to favour the right side over the left.

Traditional education has been overly focused on left-brain modes of thinking. Logic, sequences, and rote learning have been pushed, and the more creative "big picture" has been marginalized.

This is true for design teaching as well and may account for the sorry state of most student end of year exhibitions. 

Look in most design/architecture books and you still see the old Survey, Analysis, Design or SAD method of teaching predominate.  SAD because it often produces  very SAD looking work .

At the Oxford College of Garden Design I teach the way I would have wanted to be taught myself. We study two styles of Design. The traditional SAD process and John Brookes’ Pattern Analysis.

Pattern Analysis is the polar opposite to SAD.  It looks at shape and pattern based on geometrical theory and allocates the paces and lines with different materials.

As a dyslexic designer i don’t think about space allocation but art and pattern.  I visualise the site as a whole, while creating a series on interlocking geometric shapes, then allocating each with one of the following materials: paving, lawn, water, or planting.

Pattern Analysis could easily be mistaken in the early stages of the design process, for a piece of modern art, such as that created by the 20th century French artist Mondrian. 

The following video is an series of extracts from some of our lectures on design.

You will see the importance of understanding pattern and how shapes link together. 

Finally we will reverse engineer two courtyard gardens to discover their underlying patterns and how they were created.

You may wish to watch the 800x600 version of this on Vimeo to fully appreciate the lesson

Please leave feed back here or feel free to ask questions.

(Sample) GD205 Geometry of Space from Duncan Heather on Vimeo.

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