Using Small Practice Drills to Build Strong Landscape Design Skills

Practicing a full design isn’t the best way to learn. Practicing small components of a design and repeating that process is much more effective. Instead of designing a whole garden, try designing just the orientation of the path. Or just the spacing of the plants. Or just the layering of different heights.

These small, bite-sized activities let you focus on the element you want to practice without the pressure of a full design. Plus, you can more easily see what is and isn’t working. Before you practice a full design, try this simple activity: Quickly design the same space three times using basic shapes. Use perfect symmetry in one version. Try an asymmetrical offset in the second. And make the third as loose and free-flowing as possible. You can quickly see how the balance of the design affects the space without investing too much time.

The more you repeat this activity the quicker your instincts will be. And the faster you will make decisions. It’s easy to get caught up in designing the details of your garden first. When you practice deciding the colors, textures, and plant varieties too early in the process, it’s easy to get muddled later on. When the underlying structure isn’t working, no amount of detail will fix it. Instead, delay those decisions and work on the clarity of your design first.

Once your design is stable, the details will fit into place easily and support the design rather than detract from it. Just fifteen minutes per day of practicing small components can be a really big deal. Try practicing one activity each day, like arranging three clumps of plants at different heights. Or sketching a path that curves around a tree. The most important thing is that you do it every day.

As you repeat the same activity over and over, the patterns become more obvious and the changes you make are more intuitive. If something is off, don’t immediately rub out the offending parts with an eraser. Stop for a second and decide what is wrong. If your design is out of balance, just move one thing. Don’t rub out the whole design and start again. As you discipline yourself to “edit” your work instead of erase it, your brain will start to “edit” instead of erase too.

The more you practice, the more deliberate and decisive you’ll become. As you continue to practice small components of landscape design, they will start to come together to form a whole. You will become comfortable with shapes, movement, and proportions. You won’t feel like you’re starting from scratch every time you practice a full design. Because each decision you make is supported by all the little practices you’ve done.