Planting Design Course 2025

A three day course (through spring and early summer 2025) set in the gardens of Dorset Walled Garden. Led by renowned Head Gardener Troy Scott Smith.

Troy is one of the nation's most experienced and inspirational Head Gardeners. For over 25 years Troy has led the best gardens in the country, combining this with a passion for sharing through his writing, lecturing and teaching. In this innovative three-part course Troy will share his unrivalled knowledge and skills to help you create beautiful and lasting borders in your own garden.

The course will include a diverse range of learning activities, including illustrated lectures, opportunities to examine and analyise the borders at Upper Sydling House together with time spent developing and drawing up your own planting design. Through the course Troy will discuss structure, seasonality, interdependency, layering, succession, use of biennials and annuals and maintenance values of different types of planting schemes.

You will learn about reliabilty and compatability of certain plants and how to combine and distribute them for best effects. Troy will discuss the importance of a static and stable foundation of structural plants, that then allows you opportunities for adding perennial and ephemeral layers to provide flux and interest through the seasons.

In the classroom, Troy will guide you step by step through the process of creating your own planting design, from the initial idea to establising a plant palette that feels right in its environment, drawing to scale, specifying plant size and numbers, sourcing and subsequent implementation.

The course dates are as follows:

Thursday 20th March 2025

Thursday 8th May 2025

Thursday 12th June 2025

The day will include coffee on arrival, a light lunch, culminating with tea and cake at the end of the day.

Places are very limited on this relaxed, inspirational and highly informative course.

Should you wish to book a place to give to a friend, we can send a personal gift voucher out to them.  Please email us if this is the case.

Please note that our courses are non-refundable, so please make sure that you are able to attend on the specified dates. However,  if Dorset Walled Garden has to postpone or cancel the event, then all monies will be refunded. We reserve the right to cancel this course if not enough places are booked onto the course .​