Garden Design School - Welcome

Welcome to Garden Design School, the country’s leading independent provider of garden design vocational training courses. Our flagship, one-year garden design diploma is widely acknowledged as having set the industry standard in today’s garden design diploma courses. We concentrate on all the essential skills that will allow you to confidently embark on a professional career in garden design, or to extend your existing knowledge and experience.

The school’s founders, Robin Templar Williams and Moira Farnham, are award-winning garden designers in their own right. As well as running their own successful design practices, they have developed and taught world-class garden design courses and workshops at many of the horticultural, landscape and garden design schools across the UK, and internationally. Together, they have over 40 years’ teaching experience. They are very much hands-on tutors, delivering more than 75% of the course content themselves, supported by expert guest speakers renowned in their specialist fields.

The diploma course is run from two well-situated training centres: the beautifully-landscaped Painshill Park in Cobham, Surrey and the impressive University of Bristol Botanic Gardens. The 36-week diploma course takes students, step-by-step, through all they need to know to become fully-fledged, professional garden designers. Importantly, our course numbers are strictly limited to provide an optimum student-to-tutor ratio ensuring everyone has access to as much one-to-one coaching and support as they need.

You may be looking for a complete career change, to expand the services of an existing business, or simply to indulge your passion for gardens. Whatever your motivation, Garden Design School will arm you with all the practical and creative know-how that you need to achieve your objective.

Want to know more? We understand this may be a big step for you so we are more than happy to answer any questions you may have. Simply contact us by phone or email. Or attend one of our Taster Days which will give you an opportunity to sample the course, meet the principal tutors, as well as former Diploma students who can share their experiences of the course – and life as a practising garden designer.