Landscape Design in Horticultural Science
Landscape Design involves developing the grounds of residential properties that meet the client wants/needs while responding sensitively to the site. To do so effectively, one needs to have an excellent grasp of not just design theory, but soil science, grading and drainage, plants, ecological relationships, construction materials and building techniques, hand-drawn and digital graphics.
In the Department of Horticultural Science, we offer six courses in our landscape design concentration:
HS 242, Introduction to Landscape Design (3 cr. hrs, spring, open to any major, no prerequisites)
HS 252, Landscape Graphic Communication (2 cr. hrs., spring, no pre-requisites, design majors should take this concurrently with HS 242)
HS 357, Grading and Drainage (4 cr. hrs., fall)
HS 400, Sustainable Residential Landscape Design Studio (6 cr. hrs., spring)
HS 416, Planting Design (4 cr. hrs., fall)
HS 418, Digital Media (3 cr. hrs., fall)
HS 401, Landscape Construction Studio (6 cr. hrs., spring)
Students enrolled in the landscape design concentration are required to take all of the above courses. Other students who wish to learn some design may take one or a few more advanced classes (other than HS 242) with instructor permission.
As a student, what can I expect in a design course?
Up until your first design course, likely your courses to date have focused on one right answer, and to get to that one right answer, go through these very specific steps. Design is very different. While we do follow a process (problem definition, gather client data via interviews and research, depending on the client/users; site analysis, conceptual designing, preliminary design, grading, planting design, construction documentation, etc.), every designer brings his or her own style to the project. Your instructors will help you find YOUR design voice–not train you to design like them. In a studio of 16-20 students, even though each student is working with the same client information and the same site data set, because each person brings something unique to the design, there will be 16-20 different design solutions for a project. All are “right”, just different.
So how do you know you are on the right track? You will receive lots of guidance in the form of individual desk critiques, feedback during group pin-up and discussions, and written feedback like shown here: