Plant Design Formula
Online Course
Learn how to successfully combine plants to create stunning borders
Simple Plant Combining Formula
Learn how to correctly place the right plants next to each other to create stunning combinations.
Maximise How Long Your Garden Looks Good
Learn how to choose plants that will look good all year and not just for 2 weeks a year!
Learn How To Create Different Planting Styles
We cover everything from traditional, modern, natural to mediterranean planting styles.
- no complex software required
- suitable for complete beginners
- methods taught work anywhere in the world
- suitable for any type of planting scheme
- 100% online - works with computers & mobile devices
How to Combine Plants For Beautiful Borders...
Have you found that no matter how many gorgeous plants you purchase, when you get them home and place them in your garden, they just don’t look as good as you hoped?
Have you tried moving plants from one part of the garden to another, still not getting the look you’re after?
Or have you managed to get a nice planting scheme together but it only lasts a week or two before the garden looks boring again?
The Art of Plant Design...
Putting plants together well is a real art form. It’s one that’s taken me, as a professional garden designer, years to get right. To begin with I made the classic mistakes that most people make, despite my professional training!
The biggest mistake you can make is choosing plants for their flowers. It’s hard not to, but when you think about it, if a plant spends more time without flowers than with them, then it does make sense not to choose a plant solely on its flowers. So obviously you should choose plants for their foliage then, right?
No.
The Key To The Perfect Planting Scheme
Whilst choosing plants based on their leaves does help a bit more than just choosing something for the flowers, it still doesn’t entirely solve the planting plan problem. Clarity is the key. It can be very difficult to get real clarity in the planting scheme.
How you place plants next to one another is vital if you don’t want it to look like an uninteresting messy mass of leaves when things aren’t flowering.
I have a very simple but effective method I use to choose which plants I place next to one another. Despite the actual method of choosing which plants to put next to one another being simple, there is still a lot to think about if you want to achieve great results...
See what's inside the course...
MODULE 1 – The dos and don’ts of plant design
In this first module you will learn where to start with planning your planting scheme along with the 4 Steps to achieve a great planting plan. I will also discuss some very helpful plant choosing tools that will make finding the right plants for your garden much easier. We will also cover some tips on how to get past dealing with the dreaded latin plant names!
MODULE 2 – The 5 key elements of stunning planting schemes
In this second module we look at the five key factors that really make a planting scheme look great. I’ll give you tips on how to make sure you easily incorporate these five key elements into your planting plan so you can achieve great results, like a professional garden designer, simply and easily.
MODULE 3 – Creating different garden styles
Once you know what the principles of plant design are, it’s now time to discover how you create different garden styles by changing the way you combine plants and the key plants associated with different garden styles. In this module I will give you a Style Guide that shows you how to create every garden style from contemporary through to traditional, formal styles and everything else in between.
MODULE 4 – The planting plan system
In this module you’ll learn the system that brings everything you’ve learned in the previous modules together. This system will make sure you achieve the results you want with your planting scheme. You’ll also learn some cunning and very simple visualisation tricks that will help you to ‘see’ how the finished planting scheme will look in your garden.
MODULE 5 – Useful tips for creating a truly stunning garden
In this module I reveal all the tricks I use as a professional designer to make an established planting border look good without moving a single plant! I’ll also tell you all the tricks of the trade for purchasing plants at a discount, making sure you get the varieties you want and how to plant your garden on a tight budget.
ADDT’L BONUS – Customisable plant database
I’ll show you how to create your own plant database using a simple Excel spreadsheet. I’ll even include mine with nearly four hundred plants already in it. You can then search through plants for colour, size, type – eg. evergreen, etc to enable you to choose plants quickly and easily.
Examples of student gardens after completing the Plant Design Formula Course
Plant Design Formula
ONLINE COURSE
£198
($264 USD)
100% online - start anytime
5 downloadable design PDFs
11 plant design video tutorials
7 plant & garden inspiration galleries
Customisable plant database
Lifetime access to the course
BONUS 12 Month Planting Combinations Guide
Gift Purchases
If you wish to give the course as a gift, after purchase email us the details of the recipient and we will send them the course on the date you specify.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Absolutely not. The course is designed to show both complete beginners and experienced gardeners a really simple design method that can be used to transform any size, shape or style of garden, quickly and easily.
The course is 100% online, with immediate, lifetime access. So you can view it any time that is convenient for you, as many times as you want.
Yes. The plant design techniques shown in the course work on any garden, anywhere! The principles of combining do not change, just the plant varieties do. The plants will need to suit your location but the underlying framework of good design is a constant and not location specific.
You will definitely learn something new. The methods I teach in the Plant Design Formula are ones that I’ve developed over the last 25 years as a professional garden designer, so you won’t have come across them anywhere else. Good plant design is a completely different skill to gardening. What you’ll learn in the course will enhance your existing knowledge.
That will depend on how much time you devote to it each week and your individual learning style. As a rough guide, the main design section of the Plant Design Formula could be completed over 1 weekend, but I would recommend you take at least 2 weekends to allow time for the information to be fully absorbed.
No. The course has been primarily designed for homeowners who wish to improve their own garden without needing to attend a college course for weeks on end, so there is no qualification. That being said, I have had a lot of landscape professionals who've done the course and say that they've learned more from it than their professional certified training courses! Only our Great Garden Formula course has the option for a diploma.
You can ask Rachel any questions you have about the course material in the members' area of the website.
If you have a question that hasn't been answered above, please email us here.
See what our students say about the course
"Hi Rachel. Thank you so much for the incredibly valuable amount of work and passion you share through your design courses. It is absolutely amazing!
I knew how I wanted to use our garden, it simply felt impossible and I just didn't know how to achieve it. I needed the right approach and a new perspective, and your knowledge, passion and expertise made it possible. I found the courage to try myself on the board and it has been an immensily satisfactory and rewarding experience.
The Plant Design Formula is of an immense value to me: I learned the underlying principles of designing a border regardless specific plants combinations and I know I can now face my "ghosts" hoping to achieve a good result looking for the right plant's characteristics.
Thank you for being such a good teacher and for making approachable and....fun, what others made so complicated and scary!"
"Wow. I've gone through everything now and have spent hours of rainy weekends and Christmas break planning, sketching and even getting my watercolours out for the first time in years – this whole course has been truly inspirational and I can't wait to start making the changes to the design and planting of my garden. "
Get the Plant Design Formula
"The Plant Design Formula, was perhaps all that I needed to learn during my time at University. I actually find it much more relevant, in depth and richer than what I have been taught. So a trully eye opener and a very well written and presented course. Got to love the videos and the richness of information.
My favourite (very hard question) perhaps the thought process on how to draw a planting plan and the videos on planting plan styles.. and also the free plant database!! oh my days!!
I would recommend to anyone honestly, specially designers and young horticulturalists, plant sitters and the garden lover. Way cheaper than paying for a degree and with plenty effective advice.
Its just a superb course.
Thank you !"
"Hi Rachel,
If I could only attach the pictures of my redesigned garden in Los Angeles, CA, you will know how much I have benefited from the various lessons, videos and all the workbooks I ordered from you.
You are very good teacher, thorough in your ways and with a great approach to your teachings. The original garden is a far-cry from the new design.
Thank you for being a very good and innovative teacher. My best . . . . ever!!! Please keep up the good work and more success to you in creating more extraordinarily beautiful designs and encouraging and teaching others to do the same."
Marina
"Hello Rachel,
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
I love, absolutely love every one of your Plant Design Formula class/video/module.
I can't get enough... :-)
You are a great teacher. You explain how to do certain things in a very easy way. All the videos are clear and it's very easy and entertaining to watch (wish that all my years of classes was like this... I would never miss a class). I like how you set up the module in PDF first then follow with video. Basically, I like... I love everything that I have purchased from you!"
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