Getting Started in Landscape Design

One of the first things students should be doing after graduating, is contact their local Architects.

They are a ready made source of work and because of new planning regulations, many applications now require a planting plan as part of the planning conditions.

As qualified designers, you should be able to offer architects:

1. A full planting service to include specification and 5 year maintenance schedule.
2. A Arboriculture method statement
3. A Tree survey to BS5837 (2005)
4. A RPA plan and APN12 recommendations

In addition to this you can also offer a full 3D perspective and rendering service if you CAD skills are up to scratch

All of the above should be laid out in a letter to the architect having first found out his/her name so you can address it to them personally.

You then follow up this letter with a call a few days later enquiring if they received the information and if you can be of any further help.

Think about it!  If a homeowner builds an extension they will change the footprint of the garden.  As a result the garden will need re-planning.  By offering to assist the architect they can provide a cheep and very lucrative source of work.

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Could you do this in 8 Weeks?

“Remarkably this project was completed in only 8 weeks of starting the course.”

I’ve just finished marking, this years students first design project, and thought some of you might be interested in seeing what we do.

Your first project is based around a real client and site as are all the student projects, as I believe its important to give you as much real life experience as we can.

Your first assignment is a courtyard garden, approximate 100 square metres in size

This particular site is in Oxford and is part of a terrace of modern town houses with their garages on the ground floor and the living accommodation on the first and second floors.

The house has an existing balcony for entertaining, but the students have installed a flight of stairs giving access into the garden from the first floor.

The client brief was for no lawn, a substantial water feature and a secondary private sitting space for entertaining and eating out.

Remarkably this project was completed in only 8 weeks of starting the course.

The students have already covered 3 dimensional special design, they have been introduced to computer modelling, have been taught basic rendering techniques as well as studying garden history , art and planting design.

It’s no accident that our students are considered to be some of the best in the world.

I believe as a college we produce better designers in 8 week than many schools produce in one year.

This is down to 3 things

Our schools unique teaching style

The students hard work and dedication

And the fact that all are students are hand picked via a 4 day selection process so we only take the very best.

If you would like to know more about our courses, please visit our website or give me a call at my design office to arrange a personal chat about a possible career change.

Technorati Tags: Garden Design Courses,Courtyard Garden,Student,Garden Plan

Telephone Technique Pt II (Meeting the Client)

In the second part of this video tutorial on sales techniques for garden designers, I look at meeting the client. 

I discuss how to manage this meeting, what to say and when to say it and most important of all how to discussing budgets and design fees.

If you haven’t seen the first part,  click here and watch this  first.

In next months tutorial, we will look at design fees and how to calculate  fees based on both time and % based fee basis.

If you have any ideas on other tutorials you would find useful, please let me know!

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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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2 New Professional Online Courses Launched for November

The Oxford College of Garden Design launches two new 4 week on-line planting courses for industry professionals and enthusiastic amateurs.

The Oxford College of Garden Design in conjunction with its sister site MyGardenSchool have launch 2 new online planting design courses taught by multi award winning Hillier Nurseries MD; Andy McIndoe.

 A Professional Guide to Choosing, Using and Planting Shrubs covers:-

Week 1: The role of shrubs in the garden and how to use them. How to selecting the right shrub for a situation and a guide to buying the best plants. Giving your shrubs the best possible start in your garden; how and when to plant them.
Week 2: Caring for your shrubs. How and when to prune flowering and foliage shrubs to control shape, size, foliage quality and flowering. Feeding your shrubs: how, when and why.
Week 3: Hard working foliage shrubs – the foundation of good planting. The importance of shrubs for structure in gardens of all sizes. Maintaining a colour scheme with foliage throughout the year and creating exciting planting combinations.
Week 4: Shrubs for interest throughout the year. A pick of the best shrubs that will work hard in your garden to deliver colour, texture and form in every situation, including sun, shade, clay, chalk and in pots and containers.

A Professional Guide to Choosing, Using and Planting Trees covers:-

Week 1 – Tree for all Gardens – Introduction
Why plant trees?  The role of trees in the landscape and the visual impact of trees in different seasons. The environmental impact of trees and their role in attracting wildlife into your garden. Trees for screening, trees for shelter and trees for shade. Why we are afraid of trees in gardens. What are the risks and the relationship between a tree and a building.
Week 2 – Trees for Small Gardens
Choosing the right tree for a specific situation focusing on the small garden. The best choices for country gardens and for town gardens including trees for pots. Choosing trees for more than one season of interest: for fruit and flowers, bark and foliage colour.
Week 3 – Planting Trees and Productive Trees
Buying a tree; how, when and what to look for. Planting a tree: giving it the best possible start in life – the importance of staking and aftercare. Fruiting trees as an alternative to or in addition to ornamentals: including apples, lemons, olives and figs.
Week 4 – Designing with Trees
Trees as part of a planting scheme; how a tree can lead a planting scheme through the colour of its foliage.  What to plant with foliage  trees to create a planting picture. Climbers to grow through trees. Planting trees for future generations.
Both courses are on line, allowing students to study from the comfort of their own homes. The next course starts on 5^th November and then monthly on the first Saturday of each month. To book please visit our website at http://www.my-garden-school.com/courses/

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Carol’s Garden of the Month (November)

Carols garden guide for the Oxford College of Garden Design

I first visited Denmans  the garden of the venerated John Brookes many years ago on a hot sunny day in July and was so very excited to be there after eagerly devouring every book he had written and attempting to create my own garden around his design principles.

It did not disappoint although sadly on reflection mine was an insult to design and the great man himself!!!!

I have been there several times since as I am now privileged to know John, most recently just last week and it was such a different experience seeing it in late autumn.

At this time of year it is easy to see that It is clearly designed around exactly the same philosophy as is now taught at the Oxford College of Garden Design!

The strong use of ground pattern creates an underlying framework that holds the design together creating a strong and impelling route of flow – similar to my own garden! At last I have a garden that has got it right although I personally take little credit for that!

View Full Album

Denmans is admittedly 30+ years old and by John’s own admission some of the planting needs updating and plans are afoot to start again in the walled garden area which is exciting!

Nevertheless there is still plenty to enjoy in the plant department with loads of texture and colour as the photos prove! However right now it is a fantastic garden to visit to see the bare bones of a great design but if you are a “plant-a-holic” wait until June or go twice!

The garden is open all year and there is a really nice little garden centre attached to it that sells everything from a primrose to a £3000 full sized sculpture of a vestal virgin (well virgin’s don’t come cheap!)

Also there is a great restaurant with loads of quirky stuff in it (no not the food which is lovely) .

Go and pay homage!!!

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The importance of Telephone Technique!

Today’s video tutorial is on telephone technique and the importance of opening and closing a sale

FEE SCALE

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Plagiarism is alive and well

Looking for design inspiration and your USP

One of the first things I recommend to students (or even qualified designers for that matter) before they start a new design, is to look through books and magazines for design inspiration.

When my student from the Oxford College of Garden Design first start designing, their ‘design library’ i.e. their knowledge of shape, pattern, and garden features stored in their brains, is pretty much empty, so the only way they can fill it, is to expose themselves to as much content as possible.

Magazines such as Gardens Illustrated and English Garden are recommend reading as too is the Society of Garden Designers magazine ‘The Garden Design Journal’ edited by the excellent Tim Richardson. The designer is looking for two specific things at this early stage

• A Floor Plan: Ideas for shapes and patterns that will fit into their new garden. This can be achieved by studying garden layout plans in books and online. Students are looking for strong ground patterns with good inter-locking shapes that, after a little modification could transpose well into their own design.
• The Magic Feature: Secondly that little bit of magic that sets their design apart from everyone else’s. This in marketing terms would be your USP (unique selling point) It could be a sculpture or water feature or even built in furniture, but whatever it is, it should be the wow factor. Something the client is going to love, is unique and if the garden was to appear in a magazine would be the main picture to illustrate the article.

Books are another excellent source of inspiration and students should be studying not just garden/landscape design but architecture and interior design as well. Books written by garden designer John Brookes, or Terrance Conran are excellent sources of inspirations, so to is Barber Hunt and Elizabeth Whateley’s book ‘Aspects of the Garden Design Process’

By seeking inspiration from the past, modifying and adapting it to make it their own, students will gradually develop their own design philosophy, and aspire to take it into the future.

 

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Carols’ Garden of the Month (October)

Carol Heather’s garden guide for the Oxford College of Garden Design

Well I have just returned from a really enjoyable visit to  Waterperry Gardens! near Oxford

I won’t bore you with its history,  because you can read about it in the free guide or on the website, but it is interesting to note that unlike many such places, it has had a horticultural and educational bent, dating back to the1930s when a rather indomitable lady named Beatrix Havergal took up residence with an ambition to educate women in all branches of horticulture!

Personally I wouldn’t describe Waterperry as a designed space . To me, it feels more like an evolution, influenced by those managing it and also to suit its current purpose.   Somehow this lends it an air of innocence which on a wonderful bright Autumn day was very disarming!

There are many elements to the garden, but I suspect most people are immediately drawn to herbaceous borders and I was no exception.

To reach these you enter the garden via the quaintly named Virgin’s Walk (I felt something of an imposter!)  Here the planting is unexciting at this time of year, but turn a couple of corners and WOWEEE!!!!!….. the “Classical Herbaceous Border” comes into view and it looks absolutely stunning!

Stretching for 200 feet in front of you is an amazing display of Asters of every height, shape and colour interspersed with other Autumn favourites including Rudbeckias in variety and towering old style “Golden Rod” which looked far from “naff” despite it’s ongoing reputation!

At this stage you think to yourself oh this must be very dull for the rest of the year, but on closer inspection you can see that this border is planted for longevity in the interest stakes with neatly cut down lupins geraniums ,achillea and phlox patiently awaiting their next moment of glory.

Along similar lines but none the poorer for it is The Long Walk with another fantastic display of the same types of plants but with more shrubs interspersed to provide height and structure. Personally (shock horror!) I think these borders surpass the ubiquitous Great Dixter border, certainly at this time of year at least!

The other area that I enjoyed was the Formal Garden – I know this has all been done before, but it has a really nice feel about it and I loved the swaying Stipa tenuissima around the base of the sculpture.

If you judge a garden on “ideas to take home” this may not be the best, but nevertheless there are planting combos here that you could utilise in much smaller spaces and the garden really does remind you that there is absolutely no excuse for a boring garden just because summer is over! Oh and they serve fantastic cake in the café!!!! Enjoy!

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How to Create a Viewport in VectorWorks

How to create a viewport in Vectorworks

This video tutorial was created in response to a student request to remind him how to create a viewport in Vectorworks™

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The Design Process

Designer Duncan Heather argues that more can be made of the preliminary research documents, when it comes to winning design contracts and selling schemes to clients.

When first being taught to allocate space, the landscape student is guided through several different processes before they reach a final design solution.

It all starts with an accurate topographical land survey. A plan of the site is then drawn up to scale, to include boundary walls, existing buildings, trees, services and existing levels.

Having gathered this information on a local scale, the student should then expand their area of study to the surrounding landscape. Topographical, historical cultural and architectural information can be gathered from maps and the internet, which helps put the site into context and may suggest a theme on which to hang their eventual design.

Shadow plans are then calculated to assess the impact of spring and summer shade patterns and a sight Analysis plan developed to note the influencing factors of the site such as existing features, wind direction good and bad views etc.

Once all this information has been compiled, the student can start to experiment with space allocation in the form of bubble or functional diagrams.

All this work is a prerequisite to the creation of the presentation or master plan.

But what happens to all this research once the presentation plans are completed?

What many student fail to appreciate, is the difficulty many clients have in understanding the 2D plan drawings.
While we take it for granted that the ‘house’ is the big black rectangle in the middle of the drawing, it’s surprizing how few clients realise this. You can be waxing lyrical about how great their new garden is going to be, while showing them the plan and they simply can’t make head nor tail of it!

At the Oxford College of Garden Design we teach our students to overcome these difficulties by using the research and preparation drawings as part of the sales presentation.

The diagram above, illustrates the 4 preliminary design stages and can either be presented on separate sheets, or combined into one or 2 presentation drawings. These allow the designer to start their presentation, by going through the site survey and pointing out the house and the important features of the garden. This allows the client time to digest the plan and to familiarise themselves with the graphical nature of the drawings.

Next you can explain how you developed their ideas, by running through the site analysis plan and the bubble/functional diagrams.

Explaining the thought process to your clients helps you justify why you have arrive at a particular design solution, but also it help the client to understand how much work goes into the preparation of a landscape plan.

When you are charging several $1000 for an outline proposal arriving with just one sheet of paper can give the client the impression that they are not getting value for money.

Remember! you only get one crack of the whip at presenting your ideas, so you need to make that ‘sale’ in no more than about 60 minutes, otherwise you won’t get the rest of your design fee and more importantly the garden will never be built.

Arriving with 2-3 sheets of research drawings plus the garden plan, plus any coloured perspective and a mood board, suddenly starts to look like a lot of work and thought has gone into the design.

So if you want to improve your sales and get more of your gardens built, spend a little extra time ‘prettying-up’ your research drawings and use them as part of your presentation.

Duncan Heather is director of the Oxford College of Garden Design and MyGardenSchool and one of Europe top garden designers

Chaumont! Probably the best garden show in the world?

Chaumont: Gardening! –From Erotic to Rude.
As I write this blog I am reminded of a rather embarrassing episode that happened to me a couple of years back, when I visited the USA to do a radio interview on European garden trends.

It was for “W.H.B.S.Y. -coming to you from down-town Sacramento” (or something like that– all these radio stations sound the same to me!)

I had flown into San Francisco, on the late flight the previous evening.  Then driven 3 hours north east to Auburn, downed the better part of a bottle of California Red before collapsing in to bed, only to be woken at some ungodly hour the next morning, to drive back down the freeway to Sacramento, to do the “Garden Guru’s” 9am Saturday morning radio show.

Not surprisingly I was a little jet lagged, if not a little hung over. Definitely not a good combination when doing live public radio!

I was also extremely nervous, unlike UK radio, when you are lucky to get a 10 minute slot, this show was on for a whole hour with me being the only guest. The way I was feeling, I wasn’t sure I could manage 60 seconds let alone 60 minutes.

The studio was not what I had expected either and was little bigger than a passport photo booth. Rob Littlepage, who was standing in for the Don Yacuzami (the regular Garden Guru) squeezed his way back into the room and donned his headphones.

I sat down next to him but couldn’t get the door closed as my chair leg was blocking the entrance. After some discussion the door was left open and the producer Rick (or Ricky as he preferred to be called) bustled off into the next kiosk where he sat down behind a large glass screen and a bank for dials and buttons.

As I watched the seconds ticking away on the studio clock the intro. music faded in, sounding suspiciously like the theme-tune to the Archers:-and we were off.

Things started well, Rob did the introductions and thanked our sponsors. I manages to talk coherently for the first 20 minutes being periodically interrupted by callers phoning in to ask questions or publicise local events, the most notable being a ‘Toe-mat-toe tasting’, at the local nursery. “32 varieties!!! ……… I don’t know they had 32 varieties.”

I had just started to relax and let my concentration wane when Rob asked me about the contempory Garden show at Chaumont in France. All of a sudden I had a complete panic attack.


I should explain at this point that the French garden show has a theme each year and this year, typical of the French was ‘eroticism’. Knowing how prudish middle America can be, I new that this was not the subject for a Saturday morning breakfast show.

Unfortunately my mouth had other Ideas. Like a frozen rabbit caught in car headlights, I heard myself discussing one particular garden dominated by a pair of large 15ft high pink breasts.

My mind was screaming stop, but my mouth just kept on going. Rob had lost the plot at this point and was having a fit of the giggles.

The producer was wildly flailing his hand across his throat in a sawing motion and I was only saved by the timely interruption of an advert for ‘Sun Dance computers’.

On listening to a tape of the show afterwards, I had even managed to describe the viewing tower behind the garden for those people who wanted a birds-eye view of the giant mammaries.

Oh well, that’s probably the end of my radio career.

Nesting Marigolds

As for Chaumont sur Loire I would thoroughly recommend a visit even if you don’t like gardening. I take the student from the Oxford College of Garden Design there every year.  The Chateau is situated at the top of a cliff overlooking the river Loire and the show is situated in the park behind the castle in about ten acres. You enter, down a spiral staircase build into the hollow of a tree.

Cross a bridge over a 50ft gorge to some steps on the other side and finally, up into the show ground. The exhibits are identical in shape and size and each surrounded by a beech hedge.

Giant Corset

The exhibition attracts submissions from around the world with

every designer interpreting the brief in a different way.

From a nest of pink Marigold cloves to erupting luv bubbles (yes I didn’t understand this one either!) to a giant corset that you both walk through and round to a garden designed to imitate lingerie

Erupting Luv Bubbles

The setting is beautiful, the gardens imaginative and the restrant is to die for. It has to be one of the best (if not the wackyest) garden shows in the world.
For further information on Chaumont-sur-Loire
Tel: +33 (0) 254 209922
www.chaumont-jardins.com

 Negligee screening

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Specifications for Garden Designer Pt 3

The relationship between drawn and written information

On the smallest of schemes, annotated details may be all that is necessary and putting specification and drawing together may also assist the contractor.

However, on larger projects there is a danger that the specification will become dispersed onto several drawings, with repetition and contradictions creeping in. To avoid this, it is recommended that all the specification is found in one place. The drawn details can then linked to the appropriate specification description by systematic cross referencing, using the specifications own clause numbers.

This then leaves the question of the more general information such as the quality of topsoil or the strength of mortar? It is rarely adequate to leave such details to the expertise and discretion of the chosen contractor. In order to provide a professional service to your client, it often requires at least a few pages of specification separate from the drawings attached to the planting schedules, or the letter of invitation to tender.

An imperfect solution

I have touched on some of the obstacles which confront the designer and the contractor when faced with agreeing and achieving the desired standards on site;

• the need for reasonable financial certainty without being too restrictive,
• the huge amount of technical and contractual knowledge required;
  
• the designers’ time needed to tie up the more important loose ends,
  
• the absence of a simple appropriate standard form of contract.
  

Few projects are standard. Most are unique ‘prototypes’ designed and detailed from scratch.
Using an identical specification on every project, is therefore not only inappropriate, but may also be dangerous.

The concept of a ‘model’ specification is rather different from a standard solution because, the ‘model’ specification is designed to be edited by the designer to remove all extraneous information and to insert any additional information the particular project requires. The result is a tailor made document which should help the contractor.

Producing a project specification takes time and eats into the fee but the time is reduced with practice. No specification can be totally comprehensive. The designer’s decision on what to put in and what to leave out is a matter of judgement. That judgement will be made based on several factors such as the complexity of the project, the known competence of the contractor and whether the designer will be visiting site during the construction phase. Specification writing tries to be exact but in practice is an imprecise art.

A ‘model’ specification

The essentials of a ‘model’ specification are three-fold:
First it provides a familiar ‘structure’ within which every subject has its logical place.
Finding the appropriate instructions becomes quicker and easier because of this.
Secondly it can provide a check list of subjects which may need the designer’s attention. The designer can decide either to delete the subject as inappropriate or to include it with or without amendment.
Finally, by offering the designer a model clause the designer has guidance on written style and technical content.
I am sure that many designers have heard of the NBS Landscape Specification or the more modest publication “Specification Writing for Garden Design”(2) These model specifications can provide help and much needed technical guidance for the hard pressed Garden Designer. Writing a specification from scratch is a very daunting task; using a model specification makes that task considerably easier.

Even the best project specification and drawings in the world will not produce high quality work from a poor contractor. Things are less likely to go wrong with a good contractor. So every designer’s priority should be to assemble a list of good local contractors.
Then, provide them with all that essential specification information in writing by one means or another so that a proper price is tendered. Things are less likely to go wrong if the contractor has tendered a realistic price and is in possession of all the relevant information from the start. If things do go wrong, you and your client are better protected if the required quality is defined clearly and concisely.

Specifications for Garden Designer Pt 2

Most designers find specification writing a necessary evil.

Is it even necessary?

In a limited number of cases a formal specification document is probably not needed provided the essential information is given to the contractor in some other written form.

The two types of information

The written information traditionally included in a specification is divided into two main categories –the contractual obligations commonly known as the Preliminaries and General Conditions (the quality of workmanship and materials). Essential content of the Preliminaries which are vital to most projects are the start and finish dates, insurance and health and safety requirements. There are, of course other things which may need to be agreed such as the protection of existing trees, the arrangement of stage payments for work completed or the limitation of working hours, but these matters are often partly covered in a standard form of contract such as those issued by the JCLI, JCT.

The problem is that none of these standard forms of contract is entirely appropriate for small garden projects and even when they are used, they are usually completed after negotiations have taken place and a price agreed. Vital information such as the examples given above is needed before the contractor can tender a firm price. The designer is therefore left with the need to confirm such matters in writing at the beginning of the tendering process.

The options for defining quality

Before attempting to answer the above, let us first consider the question of quality. Unlike contractual and administrative matters, quality is very much more difficult to define. One way is to specify a brand name, but this may financially restrict the contractor unnecessarily.

Another method is to refer to Standards, published by the British Standards Institute or to other standards such as the National Plant Specification. Incorporating another standard by reference is often the most comprehensive and fool-proof method. However this requires a degree of knowledge about the content of those standards, both by the designer and the contractor and this is not always available.

Thirdly, the designer may write a description of quality themselves. To do so, requires practice and the development of a concise and an unambiguous style of writing and requires an depth of knowledge and skill that only the most accomplished parishioners should attempt.

In a limited number of instances, the most direct method of controlling quality is a reference to an agreed sample. This approach can be particularly appropriate for the appearance of hard landscape features like paving or walls.

The sample may be one which is constructed on site by the contractor prior to the start of the main work, or a previously constructed project preferably by the same craftsman. The advantage of a sample is that the client can be fully involved and can understand exactly what they are getting right from the start of the contract.

The use of samples

allows the contractor and his craftsmen to contribute to the creative process and gives them a positive involvement which not only draws on the contractors’ expertise but raises the craftsmen’s commitment and morale.

Monitoring the performance of the contractor is also simplified by making a direct comparison between what is built and the agreed sample.
So not every specification for quality depends solely on a long written description, but, given that there are several possible approaches to specifying quality, all of them in the end will require a degree of written clarification.

Q&A
Do you always right a specification?

Do you use a 'Model Specification' or do you write your own clauses?

Please let me know I'm always interested in you feed back and comments

Specifications for Garden Designer Pt 1

The importance of a Specification

Contractual problems can arise on any project what ever its size. However, the larger and more complex a project the more scope there is for arguments with the Contractor because the amount of money at stake is potentially larger.

The Client who is faced with additional , unexpected and perhaps avoidable costs is not going to be pleased and may hold the Designer liable. The way to avoid argument is to produce clear "documents", i.e. drawings, schedules, specifications and instructions, so that your Client, all the Tenderers' and the appointed Contractor fully understand your design intentions.

What a Specification is

The Specification is a written description of requirements. On a small, simple project it may be possible to cover the necessary information by writing specification notes on the drawing. On most contracts a separate document is usually necessary.

For convenience the Specification is normally divided into two sections. The first section deals with administrative matters and is commonly called the Preliminaries. The second section defines the quality of workmanship, materials and plants required.

The Specification should be used to define quality and sequence of work etc. while the drawing is best for defining shape, size and location.

Few designers bother with specification writing and those that do, often don’t fully understand the full legal implications of this document.

In this litigious world, sooner or later one of us is going be sued and the line between bankruptcy and survival could well be a comprehensively written specification.

The Specification and its relationship to the Contract

You should always advise your Client to enter into a written Contract . Any Specification should be one of the "contract documents". The Contract is between your Client and the Landscape Contractor. You, as Designer, are not a party to the contract although your role as agent for your Client should be defined in the Contract.

Model Specifications

At the Oxford College of Garden Design we have written are own ‘Model Specification’ published by Packard Publishing which has been widely adopted as the industry standard.

Aimed at novice and professional garden designers, this work book explains a method of producing instructions for garden design work which can be tailored to an individual designer's current project.

It has been developed over many years and most importantly is thoroughly tried and tested. It has been kept deliberately brief and is flexible enough to allow designers to expand or condense it to suit their needs, and to allow use of their favourite products and plants.
Students and newly-qualified garden designers will find the model specification particularly useful both as a contract document and as a technical check-list; it can be used on the smallest projects where the specification clauses are annotated directly on drawings or plans or as an independent document.

The overall format assumes a designer is acting as an independent consultant and not as an employee or partner of a contractor offering a package design and build service.

My Concerns!

What worries me is that specification in the UK is often taught by tutors with a limited understanding of the legal implications or worse still, by former contractors that often have a very biased attitude to specifications and see them at little more than a nuisance.

Making a specification short and simple yet comprehensive enough to avoid ambiguity is extremely difficult. Those that advocate writing your own specification can not possibly expect students to have enough skill and understanding of the subject to prepare documents that are legally water tight? Yet this is exactly what is happening today in many courses across the UK.

Your comments and feedback are always welcome

5 Applications to Help you Design Your Own Garden

 

This article, I admit to writing with a massive pinch of salt, because most people understand that the computer is only as creative as the person using it.

At The Oxford College of Garden Design we teach VectorWorks Landmark, but this is  expensive and more complex than most homeowners need. For those wishing to have a go them selves, we have several 4 week online courses at MyGardenSchool on both planting and landscape design. The following list of software I hope may be of interest to those wishing to have a go themselves.

SmartDraw 2010
SmartDraw is a drawing application to design floor plans business graphics, diagrams and charts of all kinds. The program improves communication, organization, management and planning by drawing any processes. If you know Microsoft’s Visio, this program will be familiar to you. The application also has tutorials to help.

DeltaCad
DeltaCad is more than just a paint program, because you can edit, scale, move, rotate, copy, etc. individual objects, not just paint pixels. DeltaCad allows you to zoom in to draw fine details or zoom out to see the whole drawing.

 

Showoff Home Design
The program features many in-built tools and options. The user needs Internet connection to work with the application. It features a category list with an option to choose annuals. The catalogue tab helps to choose from landscape plants, home improvements, furnishings and décor, or other items that cover a broad range of home improvements.

Realtime Landscaping Architect
New landscape design software for creating professional plans and presentations. Design houses, decks, fencing, yards, gardens, swimming pools, water features, and much more with easy-to-use tools. Give your plans a hand-drawn look using a wide variety of plant symbols and colour washes. Add plant labels automatically using the wizard, and add a plant legend with just a few mouse clicks.

Home Designer Landscape and Deck
With Home Designer Landscape & Deck by Chief Architect Software you can plan and design your perfect outdoor living space! Landscape & Deck makes it easy to quickly design the virtual look and feel of your backyard, deck, patio, pool or other outdoor project. Just point-and-click to add pre-arranged landscaping beds and any of over 4,000 Library items and over 3,600 realistic plants to your design.

Double Gold for Former Students at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

The Oxford College of Garden Design has two students who have won Gold at this years RHS Hampton Court Flower Show
Dan Lobb won gold and Best Conceptual Garden and Melissa Jolly got a Gold for her garden entitled ‘Picturesque’ also in the Conceptual category.

Dan’s garden is a subterranean underworld. Above ground the garden may appear somewhat austere with steel periscopes surrounding a tilted panel of turf - but gaze through a periscope and you can enjoy your own private view of the extraordinary garden below.
The undulating landscape of Landscape Obscured is planted entirely with edible fungi interwoven with mosses and liverworts surrounds a “lake”. The imagination feasts on this surreal, subterranean world reminiscent of fairytale forests while the angular, modernist steelwork reflects Man’s relationship with the land. Fungi form the longest living and largest communities on earth and are often overlooked. This garden provides a glimpse of these fascinating life forms.

While Melissa’s garden aims to evoke the works of specific artists or genres through the use of planting. By replicating the layout of an art gallery, openings in the gallery walls frame the different compositions of planting and the viewer’s attention is focused on each contrasting picture.
Picturesque illustrates how both gardens and plants can be seen as forms of art, and demonstrates a method for creating beautiful views even when external space is limited.

Gold Medal for Former Student

Melissa Jolly a former student of the Oxford College of Garden Design has been awarded an RHS Gold Medal for her 2011 Hampton Court Show garden entitled ‘Picturesque’
This unique and innovative installation is more art than garden, using plants to represent famous paintings.  Designed as a gallery, the public are invited in to so a series of recessed pictures made up of a combination of collage, photography and planting.
As part of our online diploma course student have to design a Chelsea Flower Show garden as an exercise and are taught to think outside the box. 

Melissa, who has already won several other medals for her show gardens says “that this exercise was invaluable in helping her think creatively.  I wouldn’t design a garden like this for a client, but this show that I can create something special for my clients.”
She then went on to say “I can't quite believe it and have had some really lovely feedback from the press...esp. The Independent journalist who said I should see if I can take it to the Royal Academy”

We would like to extend our congratulations to Mel for her well deserved award and hope this spurs all are students on to bigger and better things.

Student Exhibition 2010: See Why our students are considered some of the best in the World!

Student Exhibition 2010 from Duncan Heather on Vimeo.

The student end of years’ exhibition was held on the 17^th June with over 200 people visiting the show between 4-7pm

The students go on to use their exhibits as part of their sales portfolio so the work has a duel role both as a way of showing the external examiners the quality of the work and also as a sales aide for when they start their business.

The work displayed is a selection of all of the work completed through the year so from the first design exercises completed in the into module to the 3 real gardens completed during the course.

Not to mention the 20 or so speed design exercises design to stretch every facet of the design repertoire from commercial housing projects to car par design, through to the sighting of tennis courts and swimming pools and garage and driveway design. The course is called residential landscape design for a reason, as we cover both domestic and corporate projects to maximise the employability of our students as well as give them the broadest range of experience of any the design schools.

“The course lies somewhere between a university based education and an apprenticeship, as student and tutors work closely together on real live projects and clients from the start.”

Project 1 was a tiny courtyard garden in central Oxford the garden was part of a development of modern town houses built in the late 80’s over 3 floors with the lounge dining and kitchen bases on the first floor.
There is a first floor balcony, but no existing link to the garden, so is was decided very quickly to build a flight of stairs allowing direct access to the garden.

Project 2 was a small country garden in a village location in Rotherfield Oxfordshire. The site had significant privacy issues as well a requiring a new garage and workshop, a new conservatory and a kitchen garden. All to be squeezed into a relatively small 500 square meters

Project 3 was a 2.5 acre country garden on a sloping site in Bluebury Oxfordshire. The front entrance area require a major revamp and the client also requested a conservatory design as well as a new pond/lake at the bottom of the site.

This has been another excellent year.

You can see from the slide show that are student produce better designs in their first 8 weeks of training and most schools produce in a year.

“It’s not just their design ability! The level of technical competence and professional practice is second to none and continues to demonstrate why are student are considered to be some of the best in the world.”

 

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Carol’s Garden of the Month: Rousham Oxfordshire

It was a glorious Spring Day and on a whim as we were passing , we stopped at Rousham for what was only our second visit and I fell in love!

My first visit should have been perfect, it was 3 years ago a magical summers evening and the owners had kindly allowed us a private visit with our students from the Oxford College of Garden Design so around 20 of us strolled and explored to our hearts content but I came away having had an enjoyable time of course, but I hadn't found its magic and felt a little cheated though many others had.

This time the two of us strolled gently down towards the river with the house (which in my opinion is just the right size grand but not a huge pile) behind us and followed the meandering path with the green sward in front of us, studded everywhere with tiny primroses and primulas of the palest yellows and mauve.
With the trees burgeoning green, we occasionally passed couples picnicking in cosy spots and chatting in muted tones with one large group group of students, perfectly placed I am not sure if by accident or by design, sprawled elegantly across the grass quietly enjoying each others company in the perfect setting.

We eventually reached the start of the rill and followed its meandering path down through the woods and to the lily pond beyond where we stopped ourselves for a while to lap up the bucolic atmosphere.

Back then towards the house and the perfectly striped lawns and on into the Walled Garden which at first sight had little to offer, but promise and potential of things to come has its own attraction as far as I am concerned and then a nice surprise in the form of an arched pathway through the middle of the space under planted with clouds of blue forget me knots and soft pink tulips - lovely!

Into the garden with the huge old dovecote and topiary and again this wonderful sense of peace and that you are not in a public space but an interloper in a very private garden-  delicious!  Everywhere there are seats inviting you to linger a while and in the warm spring sunshine with the espaliered fruit trees and Cornus Mas in bloom  it is lovely to stop and watch the white doves tooing-&- froing completing the picture.

As we leave stopping to admire the amazing old trees just in front of the house and the antics of the posh fluffy legged bantams that preside over the space we smile and thank the lady at the entrance saying we felt like we had the garden all to ourselves, she smiled and told us there were around 70 other visitors that day - you would never have guessed!

A lovely experience leaving you feeling calm but stimulated at the same time so very much nicer than visiting some of the bigger stately homes and gardens where you share the space with coaches, numerous instructional signs (where did keep off the grass ever belong in this situation?) dubious gift shops crowded noisy tea rooms and out of control bored children!

The only facilities at Rousham are the loos and you cannot take young children but it is so welcoming - choose your day ,take a picnic that does the venue justice ( a pork pie and a packet of crisps just won't cut it here) choose your spot and add to the artistry of the space for a while!  See you there!

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