Second in a four-part series in which Steve Whysall looks at gardening and professional horticulture
Today: a look at a landscape course offered at UBC
Ron Rule, one of Vancouver’s most successful garden designers, has been running the Landscape Design certificate program at the University of B.C. for the past 14 years.
The six-month course appeals to people with a variety of interests and motivations.
Some students are keen to launch themselves into a career as full-time garden designers.
Others are already working in horticulture and have either landscape installation or maintenance companies and are eager to add design skills to their portfolio.
Avid home gardeners also take the course to learn more about the basics of good garden design so they can put the knowledge to work for themselves in their own gardens.
“We get about 35 to 40 students a year with ages ranging from the 20s to the 60s, although most students are about 35 to 40,” Rule says.
“We have made a policy from the beginning of trying to achieve as diverse a group of people as possible – doctors, nurses, computer people, pilots, graphic designers, architects. We like that. Some of our graduates have gone on to do landscape architecture.”
Started in 1997, the design certificate program came out of a garden history course that Rule was teaching at UBC. The Continuing Education department asked him to design a course because there was a lot of demand for it.
“We studied the top garden schools in North America and England and came up with a curriculum covering five basic modules. We basically took all the best ideas from all the different schools,” Rule says.
The five sections of the course comprise history and theory of garden design; drafting, design and communication skills; garden case study; hard landscaping (permanent features such as walls, paths and solid structures); and soft landscaping (planting).
The course takes 154 hours, but classes are spread over weeknights and weekends. The program takes six months to complete.
“Someone working full time could take a couple of weeks off work and still be able to do the program without having to quit their job,” Rule says.
The garden case-study part of the course requires students to work in teams of four to produce a design for an actual garden.
“We pick a typical urban garden and students have to come up with plans to suit the needs of the client.
“I find the presentation skills of our students are far beyond what I dreamed possible in a short course like this.”
At the end of the course, students are able to prod uce a design, complete with instructions for materials and planting.
Rule thinks the demand for competent garden designers is on the increase in B.C. and graduates of the design course are well equipped to meet the needs of clients. “A lot of people travel today and they are returning with ideas about how they want their gardens to be a place they can relax in.
“They are spending a lot of money on kitchens and bathrooms and automobiles and now they are looking at their gardens as a personal expression.
“The economy is fairly stable here in B.C., so I think the need for quality garden design will continue to be a growth industry for quite a while.”
swhysall@vancouversun.com
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