How Long Does It Take to Study Garden Design?
Aug 20, 2026
by Hannah Smith, Principal of Oxford College of Garden Design
If you're considering training as a garden designer alongside work, family or an existing career, one of the most important questions isn't simply how long the course lasts.
It's how much time you will actually need each week.
And this is an area where course descriptions can sometimes be misleading. Two garden design courses may both describe themselves as taking a year to complete, while requiring very different levels of study.
At the Oxford College of Garden Design, we would rather students understand the commitment before they begin.
How many hours a week does the OCGD Diploma take?
Students should expect to commit around 15 hours per week as a realistic minimum to the OCGD Diploma in Residential Landscape Design.
However, students aiming to progress through the programme in approximately 12 months will often spend closer to 25-30 hours per week, particularly during substantial design projects and periods of technical work.
There isn't a single number that applies to everyone.
Someone with previous drawing, horticultural or design experience may move through certain areas relatively quickly. Another student may spend considerably longer developing a drawing, researching materials or resolving a design.
And sometimes the work simply expands because students become absorbed in it.
That is part of learning to design.
Can I study garden design alongside a job?
Yes. OCGD students come to the Diploma from a wide variety of circumstances and many combine their studies with existing professional and family commitments.
The online format makes that possible because much of the course material can be studied at times that suit you.
There is, however, an important distinction between flexible and self-paced.
OCGD is not simply a library of recorded lectures to work through alone.
Students join a cohort and have a live small-group tutorial every week. Tutorial times are organised at the beginning of the course, with different time zones and working schedules taken into consideration wherever possible.
The rest of your study can then be organised around that weekly structure.
How did I fit the OCGD Diploma around family life?
I studied the OCGD Diploma myself before becoming a practising garden designer and, later, Principal of the College, so I know what the workload feels like from the student's side as well as the tutor's.
At the time, I was on maternity leave after becoming a mum for the second time. Alongside looking after a young family and studying for the Diploma, I was also gaining practical work experience with a local landscaping company. It was a busy period, but I was very deliberately immersing myself in garden design from several different directions at once.
I didn't approach the course as though I had 25 or 30 perfectly organised hours available every week. I fitted the work around family life and my work experience, making use of the flexibility of online study while protecting proper blocks of time when I needed to concentrate on design work.
Some parts of the course were relatively easy to fit into smaller pockets of time - watching lectures, researching or working through technical material. Design projects were different. Once I was developing a scheme, I found I needed longer, uninterrupted periods to get into the design, test ideas and properly work through a problem.
The workload wasn't completely even either. There were quieter periods and then weeks when a project demanded much more time. Sometimes that was simply because I became absorbed in what I was doing.
The weekly tutorials gave my studies a really useful rhythm. I always had a point in the week to work towards, but, more importantly, I wasn't trying to resolve every design problem alone. I could bring work in progress to a tutorial, discuss what wasn't working and use that feedback to move the design forward.
Working with a landscaping company alongside the Diploma was valuable too. I was learning the principles of professional garden design through OCGD while simultaneously seeing how gardens were actually built on site. It helped connect the drawings, construction knowledge and design decisions I was making on the course with the reality of creating gardens for real clients.
That's probably the biggest thing I would say to anyone wondering whether they have enough time for the Diploma: don't assume you need to find 25 or 30 perfectly organised hours every single week.
You do need to make genuine space for it, and there will be periods when it demands a lot from you. But the flexibility of the course means those hours can be organised around your circumstances.
For me, that meant combining the Diploma with maternity leave, a young family and practical work experience. It was intensive, but it also meant that when I finished I wasn't simply completing a qualification - I was already beginning to build the experience and confidence I needed for my new career.
What do those hours actually involve?
Professional garden design training involves considerably more than watching lectures.
A typical week might include structured course material and lectures, research, sketching and drawing, developing a design project, CAD work, technical detailing, planting design, preparing presentation material and responding to feedback from your tutorial.
As the Diploma progresses, the balance changes.
Some weeks are more theoretical. Others may involve spending several hours resolving one area of a plan, developing construction information or refining the way a design is communicated.
That process is intentional.
The objective isn't simply to know about garden design. It is to develop the ability to do it.
Why does professional garden design training take so much time?
Garden design sits at an unusual intersection of creative design, horticulture, construction and professional practice.
A professional designer needs to understand space, proportion and composition, but also levels, materials, planting, technical drawings, client communication, budgets, contracts and how a garden moves from an idea on paper to something that can actually be built.
There is also another skill that is harder to quantify: design judgement.
That develops through repetition.
You produce an idea. You discuss it. It is challenged. You test another solution. You draw it again. Gradually, you become better at recognising what works and understanding why.
This is why direct tutor contact is such an important part of the OCGD Diploma.
How much tutor contact do OCGD students receive?
Students take part in a live tutorial every week, working within a small tutorial group and receiving feedback from practising garden designers.
Rather than waiting until a finished assignment has been submitted to discover whether an approach worked, students can discuss their thinking while the design is developing.
That ongoing critique is central to the way OCGD teaches.
Students also learn by seeing other people's projects develop. Listening to a tutor critique another design can be just as valuable as discussing your own, because it exposes you to different sites, briefs, problems and possible solutions.
Over the duration of the Diploma, that represents a substantial amount of direct interaction and design discussion.
Does the Diploma have to be completed in 12 months?
Not necessarily.
Some students are able to organise their lives around an intensive period of study and progress through the Diploma in approximately a year.
Others deliberately take longer.
For students studying around significant work or family commitments, 15-18 months can be a more realistic timeframe.
We would rather a student take the time required to develop their work properly than race through the programme simply to meet an arbitrary completion date.
Life also happens. Circumstances change, work becomes busy and family commitments sometimes need to take priority. The structure of the Diploma recognises that professional training has to exist alongside real life.
Is an intensive course worth it?
That depends entirely on what you want from your garden design education.
If you want to explore garden design as an interest, develop ideas for your own garden or simply learn more about the subject, there are excellent shorter courses requiring a much smaller commitment of both time and money.
Professional training serves a different purpose.
If your aim is to work with real clients, produce professional drawings, understand how gardens are constructed and ultimately build a career as a garden designer, you need time to practise those skills.
When comparing courses, therefore, don't look only at the number of months printed beside the course title.
Ask:
- How many hours will I actually study?
- How much direct contact will I have with my tutors?
- How much design work will I personally produce?
- Will my work be critiqued while I am developing it?
And perhaps most importantly:
- What will I genuinely be capable of doing when I finish?
Those questions tell you far more about the depth of a garden design course than its duration alone.
Training to become a professional garden designer
The Oxford College of Garden Design Diploma in Residential Landscape Design is an intensive online professional programme combining structured course material with weekly live tutorials, ongoing design critique and practical technical and professional training.
It is designed for students who aren't simply looking to learn about garden design, but who want to develop the skills and judgement required to practise professionally.
