Monday, November 14, 2011

Landscaping Courses – For Business or For Personal Pleasure

Homeowners who have space large enough for a garden will want this special place to look nice. However, looking nice enough that everyone will appreciate can be hard to achieve.  A garden has to have a stimulating environment, where every element – plants, structure, and amenities – are in harmony, creating an enjoyable and refreshing unit for everyone. We would know what we want to see in a garden but not all of us can create the right visual, coordinated balance in the color, choice of plants and water features. Many untrained would-be landscapers have failed and made quite expensive mistakes. If you are planning to create your own garden or go into the business of gardening, then taking landscaping courses should be part of your plans. You have to know what you will be doing first even before you handle any gardening tool and dig the ground to plant.

You will need the skills you will learn from this course because they are your essential keys to success.  You may have natural talent or what they call the “green thumb” when it comes to planting, but you still need to acquire special landscaping techniques and gardening skills that will make you a good landscape and garden designer. As a professional landscape and garden designer, you need to learn the ins and outs of the business, both in terms of being an artist and as a business. Landscaping courses will bring you to the world of building different garden features and structures. You will be shown how the different kinds of garden irrigation systems work and how to install the appropriate one in the garden you are creating.  You will learn how to plant seasonal flowers, trees and shrubs and bring them to grow beautifully. It is also indispensable that you know about soil types and how to maintain them so the plants will grow to their full potential. It may not be necessary for all gardens you will build but you will also have to learn about lighting systems and how to implement them for each type of garden. On the business side, landscaping courses will teach you about writing your business plan, preparing cost estimates, and how marketing principles apply to your business so you can launch and market your landscaping business successfully.

A garden can be as beautifully complex or simple as the owner wants it to be.  Your job as a landscape artist is to make sure that the garden you create is aesthetically satisfying and functionally valuable, whether it is in a commercial or residential setting. The garden owner is relying on you to make the right decisions to provide creative solutions in designing the right environment for the garden.  Knowing about the history and influences on landscape design over the centuries can provide you with the right direction in the design process. It will also help if you are familiar with business management principles for gardening and landscaping business, and the uses and types of landscaping construction materials.  Knowing how to use landscaping and gardening software can also be a great help.

The easiest way for you to become familiar with this business is to take easy landscaping courses such as basic landscaping design. This course is usually made up of lessons on site analysis, surveying, zoning, reading and interpreting garden plans, scale drawings, garden styles, and landscaping specifications. Another important course is plant identification and planting design. As a landscape artist, you are required to know and identify which plants are suitable for planting in a given location and at the prevailing season or weather.  You can compare yourself to a painter who uses oil or watercolor to bring a scene into life in a piece of canvass. A painter considers the shade and textures of the paint he or she will use while you as a landscape designer look the same features of plants before deciding which to plant and where to plant them.

Knowing how to prepare, read and interpret landscape design and construction drawings is an essential skill for landscape designers.  The landscaping courses you will take must include this course so you can prevent any kind of misunderstanding that might arise between you, the designer and the contractor if ever you need to hire one for your projects.

As a landscape and garden designer, it is up to you, with respect to the homeowner, to harmonize the house and the landscape you will design and create for it.  You may have this ability as a natural intuition on your part; you may have the natural talent for such a job.  However, landscaping being an art form, you can also take landscaping courses such as those offered by Lifestyle Learning Direct that will help you perfect your art so you can take more challenging projects in the future.

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