Drawing for garden and planting design (foundation course) at Kew Gardens

The Design Drawing Foundation Course

Are you interested in garden design but feel overwhelmed by the daunting task of drawing your ideas? We have good news for you! Our new garden design drawing course is here to help you build a strong foundation in drawing skills and unleash your creativity.

Over three days, Andrew Wilson will guide you through the basics of drawing and teach you how to create accurate and beautiful sketches of your garden design ideas. The course covers the essential skills of plan, elevation and cross section production with emphasis on line quality and colour rendering techniques allowing you to develop drawings that communicate your ideas and the atmosphere of the gardens you wish to communicate. You will also explore perspective drawings to explore your designs in 3D.

Whether you're a keen garden enthusiast or starting a design career looking to improve your skills, our course is designed to help you grow your talent and develop your own unique style. Join us today and take the first step towards becoming a successful garden designer!

More about the course

The ability to produce accurate drawings is an important skill in garden and planting design. Despite the widespread use of computer aided design (CAD) the ability to sketch and think spatially is still essential to the design approach and we will help you get started and become confident in hand drawing.

We have always offered drawing tuition within our main courses together with dedicated days at RHS Wisley which are always over-subscribed. We are now pleased to offer a new 3-day course at our home in Kew Gardens that will run over three weeks and enable you to learn skills and practice drawing with the benefit of feedback.

The course starts with an introduction to materials and equipment and covers the main drawing formats used in garden design. We will also explore the use of scale in the production of accurate drawings and you will work on the first exercise which will produce your first plan, elevations and cross sections. In week two we concentrate on the expressive quality of the drawings you produce exploring plant material and colour rendering in particular. There is a drawing and design exercise running through the three weeks that allows you to explore and draw your own ideas. Finally, we move on to perspectives – both one point and two point, allowing you to understand and analyse your ideas in 3D.

Timing and access

11/10, 18/10, 25/10

The course will run on three consecutive Fridays in October (11th, 18th and 25th) to give you time to develop your skills between each class. We will be based in the Orangery Conference Room in Kew Gardens not far from Kew Green. For information on travelling to Kew please refer to the location information on our main website lcgd.org.uk

A list of suggested materials will be sent before the course. Ticket price includes garden entry and you will be able to purchase refreshments from the nearby Orangery.

Please note that elements of this course will be covered on our Garden Design Diploma. If you are enrolled on the Diploma for 2025-26 this course will help you start practising your skills. For our other Diploma and Certificate courses this course will give you a good grounding in drawing technique.

Images Juliet Erridge and Fisher Tomlin

Host or Publisher London College of Garden Design