Company Name: Irene School of Garden Design Telephone: Fax: Cell Phone: Email: infoisgd.co.za Website:
Course Title: Part time Professional Gardening Course
The part time professional course is presented one evening per week.
Enrolments for courses presented from January to December have classes every Tuesday evening and one Saturday morning per month. Students enrolled for courses presented from July to July have classes on Wednesday evenings. This course is aimed at people of all age groups who would like to become a professional landscape designer, but can't devote the time during the day and would like to do it after hours. Practical design work and theory examinations will be assessed at the end of every term to maintain the high standards set by the governing landscaping bodies (see course accreditation for the affiliated landscaping bodies). It is endorsed by leading landscape designers, architects and Landscape architects, and students registering for this course after 2010 might be eligible to be registered to leading institutions like SALI depending on their performance.
•Freehand drawing
•Setting up
•Layout
•Plans
•Symbols
•Projection
•Freehand perspective
•Rendering and graphic standards
•Presentation
Design
•Design theory
•Form,space, order and circulation
•History of design
•Design principles
•Planting design
•Concept formulation
•Practical
•Frame of reference
•Creative exploration
•Contemporary landscape design
•Outdoor lighting
Planting
•Introduction to plant biology
•Plant identity
•Plant combinations
•Specifications
•Planting plans
•Planting densities
•Ecology and sustainability
Construction
•Introduction to construction
•Sustainable landscape construction
•Contours and landforms
•Dumpy level
•Construction drawing
•Construction materials
•Costing and specifications
•Irrigation
•Lighting plan
•Waterfeatures
Course topics:
Design process
Client interview
Site Analysis
Triangulation
Freehand drawing
Setting up
Layout
Plans
Symbols
Elevations and axonometric drawing
Rendering and graphic standards
Form, space, order, and circulation
History of the environment
Design principles and colour
Planting design
Concept formulation
Outdoor lighting
Introduction to plant biology
Plant identity
Planting plans
Introduction to construction
Sustainable landscape construction
Contours and landforms
Dumpy level
Construction materials
Specifications
Introduction to Irrigation
Lighting plan
Practical experience
Practical experience Full time course:
Setting up of dumpy levels
One class outings to explain difficult concepts in practice
Plant identity examination
Plantland garden show. Design, order and build-up.
One real life design project start to finish with client
4 design projects throughout the year
Reasonable studio assistance with projects
Various assignments
Please note:
The course does not include drawing equipment, presentation tools and books .
We care about our environment; the course notes will be provided digitally.
All outings, entrance fees, and travel expenses
are for the student’s own account
Certain expenses are not catered for during the show garden exhibitions.
We always try to keep additional costs to a minimum.
The course provides certain design programs as training tools only.
This is not necessarily the chronology in which the topics are presented, but the flow diagram is a rough guide only.
General course information:
The Irene school of Garden Design part time and full time garden design courses are the superior choice in landscape design education. The course is a multi-faceted, comprehensive combination of skill sets required to work in this industry, and it is endorsed by well established Landscapers, Architects, Nurseries and specialist Ecological and Environmental causes including many published authors and public garden personalities. The course is presented in an enjoyable, friendly, informal and productive manner that suits all people, no matter your language preference or level of experience.
We offer the only conceptual landscape design education course that develops creative thinking, and we were also the first to include and develop spatial and architectural philosophy and theory into our courses. The courses are presented to manageable amounts of students to optimize your results. Past students have had great success in working environments with well established landscaping firms that now endorse our course. The course material is presented by truly the most unsurpassed individuals in the industry. We are also one of only a few schools to adopt a bilingual approach to education, and we offer students loads of opportunities to steer their careers with practical work as well as theoretical knowledge.
The course is presented at the Eco park conference centre in Eco park Centurion and offers loads of safe and secure parking for all our students and is easy to get to from Pretoria and Johannesburg,. We also offer a range of other services and products at discounted rates only to students of the Irene School of Garden design. We also adapt our course to your learning tempo and level of experience. Ample tests exams and design assessments, moderated by professionals and universities, assure that we only put our best in the market place, and also give you an indication of how you are doing.
Course topic explanation:
Freehand drawing skill
This is an exciting series of exercises to develop the creative side of the brain. We have learnt how to draw by means of symbols
instead of drawing what the right brain sees. These simple exercises help us understand how our brain functions and improve free hand drawing confidence.
Drawing symbols and graphic standards
Designers communicate their ideas by putting it on paper. This section of the course consists of the layout and details of the design plan, planting plan, and construction drawings. We also provide the student with enough symbols for hard and soft landscaping as well as standards for using these symbols.
More than Plan
Here we teach the students to draw elevations, sections, axonometric and perspective drawings of their designs with ease. This is necessary to communicate the concept, heights and mood of the design.
Rendering workshop
In order to communicate ideas designers must be able to use a variety of colour mediums to effectively convey the plan, sections, elevations and axonometric drawings. We teach the student to work with coloured pencil, line thicknesses, drawing pens, copic colour pens and combinations of different mediums (digital medium is taught as part of the full time course only).
Form space Order and circulation
All designers concerned with space must know what it is, how it works and that it is such an integral part of life that it effects our bodies, our minds, our movement, our emotions and that we can never escape it. Space making theory is an analysis of everything we thought we knew about space. It helps us to design new and exciting gardens full of meaning and identity rather than just putting together a style and combining what we have seen before (Class outing to Apartheids museum)
Design principles and colour
Here we discuss all the design principles in depth and help students to make it their own to achieve better results out of the design process.
Concept formulation
It is very important to formulate a concept before you start the design process. To formulate a Concept is at the same time one of the easiest and most difficult things to do. We discuss what the concept is and express it by means of music, discussion and mood boards. The mood board also help student to lay out images and ideas on paper.
Client interview
In the client interview we discuss the different types of clients. We teach the students to pinpoint personality types and provide them with all the necessary questions to ask the client. We also discuss the design process in detail as well as pricing later during the course. Project one commences where all the students interviews each other. These interviews will be used for design project1, a house and garden project to get to grips with the symbolism and theory learnt up to this point
Triangulation
We teach the students to plot a real life project in its exact position on plan by means of triangulation
Outdoor Lighting
Outdoor lighting isn’t all that difficult to achieve. This is an exciting outlook on the different kinds of light, the multitude of bulbs and luminaries, and we look at the great effects that can be achieved with our easy to use lighting layers.
Planting design
This part of the course focus on the plant selection process, plant combinations, The different roles of planting, introduction to plant identification, some special effects to use foliage to create an illusion of a bigger or smaller space.
Irrigation
This part of the course is presented by an external irrigation specialist from Netafim, who introduces the students to the industry and products.
Contours and landforms
Students learn how to set up a dumpy level and take height measurements with the instrument. Then we teach the students to translate the site information to paper for analysis. We teach a step by step program of working with contours as well as exercises in contour manipulation. We discuss where landforms come from and why they are so important. We also discuss how one small garden in interconnected to a web of ecology and how your design can influence the environment.
Hard landscaping
We discuss different landscaping materials and their history as well as their applications in the garden. Through design we plan the different processes involved in the construction of everyday garden products and an external lecturer tells us every thing we need to know to design water features, swimming pools and hardware as well as introduce our students to the industry. We constantly discuss the construction details and problems throughout the year during their individual designs.
Basic Botany, propagation, and general garden management
This exiting side of gardening is presented by an eternal lecturer.
Ecology and climate
We explain exactly what ecology is and the relationship it holds to us. We also explain the different terminologies involved in order to fully understand current situations. The group discuss certain strategies to prevent damage to an ecologically sensitive area and com forth with a management plan. Ecology is not an aesthetic. Ecology is interaction of species.
Water and soils
We discuss the different methods of treating water run-off as well water and soil as a resource. An external lecturer introduces the notion of organic products and methods and introduces the students to the industry.
Sustainable landscape construction
A design product is only truly sustainable if the construction is also sustainable. We look at what the designer can do to mitigate the destructive building process.
History present and future
We take a brief look at the history of architecture and gardening through the ages and have a discourse on the work of some of the most influential contemporary and modern designers, gardeners, landscape architects and landscape artists. Does South Africa have its own aesthetic? We discuss this and the different vernaculars of our country.
Specifications and costing
This part of the course ensures that everyone get what they pay for when designing a garden. This is where we discuss the roles and responsibilities of the designer, contractors and client. We provide the basis for the specification document where personal preferences on planting methods and products can be changed.
Basic business management
Setting up and running your own business. Only applicable to the full time course
Design experience
The students do a number of projects throughout the year into which we try and build as much topic information as possible for the different stages of learning. It is also the basis for philosophies, discussions, revisiting some of the course material, public speaking, and added tips of the trade so to speak. Students also help one another during the design mornings and evenings and this helps to build a network of people who can assist each other in the many different alternatives the residential garden industry offers.
Course Days and Times
Tuesday (Jan to Dec course) 18:00 – 20:45 Eco park conference centre
Wednesday (July to July course) 18:00 – 20:45 Eco park conference centre or other
2nd Saturday of every month 9:00 – 12:30 Eco park conference centre
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