About the College

For nearly three decades, the Oxford College of Garden Design has evolved alongside the profession itself.

Here's how the College grew from an independent specialist school into an international community of practising designers.

Our teaching combines structured video content with live tutorials and ongoing tutor feedback. This allows students to study flexibly without sacrificing the interaction, critique and academic rigour at the heart of the original OCGD course.

Learning Through Critique

Learning to design is an active process. It develops through making decisions, testing ideas, discussing them and learning how to see when something could be better.

Throughout the Diploma, students take part in a live, small-group tutorial every week, where they present their work as it develops and receive direct feedback and critique from practising garden designers.

These weekly tutorials are central to the OCGD approach. Rather than working independently towards a finished submission, students are supported throughout the design process - questioning decisions, exploring alternatives and learning how to resolve real design problems.

Over time, this develops something that can't simply be learned from a lecture: the confidence and judgement to think like a professional designer.

Learn from Practising Designers

Every tutor at OCGD is an experienced practising designer.

Alongside Duncan Heather, students are taught by Hannah Smith, with regular guest sessions from leading professionals across the garden design and landscape industry.

Because our tutors continue to design for real clients, every tutorial is grounded in current practice - not just theory. From presenting concepts to managing projects on site, students learn from people doing the job every day.

The Oxford College of Garden Design is unique: it's the only course that teaches the John Brookes design style in its entirety. Brookes was the first person to popularise the idea of gardens as an outside room - an extension of the home.

Duncan Heather worked as John Brookes’s design assistant for several years before being offered a directorship with his company. 
As a student, you will also have exclusive access to John Brookes’s entire library of work. Over 50 years and 300 design projects have been digitally scanned for your reference.

By learning this method of garden design, you’ll gain the ability to:

• Understand a Design Philosophy.
• Create gardens that could last hundreds of years.
• Connect a garden seamlessly to its surroundings 
• Use plants as architecture
• Use shape, structure, and proportion to create a natural extension of the home and landscape
• Design gardens that serve the needs of those who use them

If you’d like to understand more about the College, the course structure and what’s involved, you can download the full Diploma prospectus.