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Landscape and Garden Design

From residential gardens to public parks, landscape designers create inspiring, innovative and functional green spaces. Study landscape design and you’ll learn how to assess a site, design a garden, and choose the right plants and shrubs that will thrive. It’s a creative career with lots of scope to come up with your own designs and apply them to all sorts of different environments.

Explore your options

Study a certificate or diploma in landscape and garden design at Unitec and you’ll learn how to design and plant beautiful, functional and ecological green spaces.

Unitec’s green and leafy Mt Albert campus is the ideal environment to practise your skills. Our programmes focus on residential garden design and include relevant field trips and development of practical skills such as draughting, perspective drawings, plant identification, selection and care.  Real-life projects will reinforce the fundamental design principles taught and the emphasis on accurate site analysis will provide a strong basis for creative design solutions for sites.

As a student in our New Zealand Certificate of Horticulture Services (Landscape Design) you will learn important skills of landscape design, representation and plant use in an introductory programme that offers flexible study options for full and part time during the 6 month programme.

While students in our New Zealand Diploma in Landscape (Design) will further develop their design and ecological plant knowledge as well as adding CAD/computing skills and design details during the year long programme.

 

Programmes and study path

Start with a programme that suits your qualifications and/or experience, then progress to a level that achieves your goals.
PROGRAMME LEVEL DURATION CAREER OPTIONS START DATES
New Zealand Certificate in Study and Career Preparation (Level 3) 3 Full-time for 16 weeks or part-time options available Entry into further study at certificate or diploma level. February or July
New Zealand Certificate in Horticulture Services (Landscape Design) 4 Full-time for six months or part-time options available. Home garden designer, Garden centre salesperson, Private gardener, Home garden designer February and July.
New Zealand Diploma in Landscape (Design) 5 1 year full-time. 1.5 - 2 years part-time. Landscape technician, Residential landscape designer, Garden centre design consultant, Garden journalist, Landscape draftsperson, Landscape maintenance manager, Landscaper, Park, botanic or heritage garden manager, Plant consultant, Gardener February and July

Industry contacts

Unitec works closely with the following organisations to deliver seminars, awards and internships, guest lectures, field trips and prizes to Landscape and Garden Design students.

Public seminars

The Scala Seminar Series is a series of hour-long public lectures hosted by Unitec’s architecture and landscape architecture staff. Open to everyone, the seminars explore a range of topics relating to the multi-disciplinarity of architecture, landscape design and landscape architecture.

The seminar series provides a forum for current practice and research in landscape and architecture. CPD points are available to practitioners by the NZ Institute of Landscape Architects, the NZ Registered Architecture Board and Architectural Designers New Zealand.