Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
Replies
I can recommend any courses but I would definitely recommend a few books which can help a lot.
The making of the modern garden . Christopher nearl Hole
Planting , a new perspective oudolf n kingsbury.
Everything ever written by the late Christopher Lloyd.
Good luck
Jessica, theres a lot of options out there for online study between Garden Design and Planting Design.
Im not sure why Planting Design has been added - i presume Garden Design became too Hard Landscaping orientated and less plant based ?
Prices seem to range from around £300 for cheap and chearfull courses 4-8 weeks to £10 000 for the leading colleges online courses (Kew and Oxford College of Garden Design) 1 Year
Theres a huge difference in pricing / eventual qualifications/ skills taught and time needed to study.
I would expect you needing to spend at least half the week studying on the higher end ones, where as the cheaper ones you can easily do over winter or weekends which is less impact on earnings.
Part time physical courses seem to be half the price of the leading online ones which is well worth considering as although online sounds great you can find yourself distracted / isolated from the other other students.
p.s . did you download the Oxford college prospectus ? I did find the follow up emails from Duncan very informative and an amazing piece of direct marketting
This is the text book we read on my Design course: 'The Planting Design Handbook' by Nick Robinson. ISBN 0745630358 It is brilliant and will teach you Design Principles and the importance of Context.
I recommend the book Paul mentioned below by Oudolf and Kingsbury. Even more up to date is the research by James Hichmouth, 'Sowing Beauty'.
For most people who just want beautiful planting you will learn plenty about plants and good borders from anything by Penelope Hobhouse or Beth Chatto.
I shamefully still haven't read Christopher Lloyd - but he is always on everyone's 'best read' list when asked in Gardening journals.
Lucy