Garden Designer

If you’ve ever seen artistic renderings of the Garden of Eden, you’ve probably noticed the carefully staged fruit trees, the impeccably pruned shrubbery, the freshly cut lawn, and the strategic use of stones, water features, and wildflowers.

Because he was so busy creating the rest of the universe, there’s really only one logical explanation: God must have hired a Garden Designer.

With or without divine inspiration, your job as a Garden Designer is to design gardens, which can be either ornamental, in the case of recreational gardens (that is, botanical gardens), or functional, in the case of gardens used for growing flowers, herbs, fruits, and vegetables.

Either way, you’re a lot like a Landscape Designer, except that you focus on the minutiae of a garden — which is an outdoor “destination” — as opposed to the broad design of a larger landscape, which is an outdoor “backdrop.” It’s a minor but important distinction. While Landscape Designers focus on enjoying the landscape from outside it, Garden Designers focus on enjoying the landscape from within it.

To achieve your goal — a garden that’s both aesthetically pleasing and technically successful — you tackle the following responsibilities: consulting with and advising clients; surveying and measuring sites; developing and drawing plans, which typically include different “zones” for planting, seating, etc.; choosing and arranging plantings, based on size, color, climate, and seasonality; designing amenities, such as fencing, water features, pergolas, gazebos, etc.; and managing projects, including construction, scheduling, and budgeting.

The Garden of Eden may have been pretty. In your gardens, however, no fruit is forbidden!