2.0 Hand drawn landscape plans

When working professionally, you will present plans to a client and it is essential than you learn to produce plans that are detailed, dimensionally accurate, and clearly convey your intended design to both client and the contractor implementing the design. Landscape designers spend a great deal of time developing these plans and since these are the blueprint for the development of a space, you need to master their production. Rather than jump in and ask you to produce hand drawn landscape plans immediately, we have some preliminary work for you to do. The thrust of this module is at the 'high level' - what are landscape plans and what are their essential components.

Project assignment

We want you to:

View the hand drawn plans below in terms of how effecte they are in conveying design ideas and write a brief assessment of them in the word processor in your Google Docs space.
Choose a number of symbols from one of the plans and replicate it using your current set of hand drawing skills (which may well be minimal). Scan or photograph the symbols and upload copies to your Google Docs space.
Finally, and most importantly, study some excellent Internet material on what landscape plans should contain. These come courtesy of the University of Minnesota.

A reminder - prerequisites

Often when you start a new project in this diploma, we will ask you to complete some preliminary work by way of background learning. The preliminary work is of course, designed to prepare you for the task, but we do try to stretch you a little.

Before attempting this particular project, please make sure that you have completed the following:

The first module in the basic Computer Skills course which provides an overview of some of the many tasks that can be completed using a computer. Among other things, we asked you to hand draw a some sort of sketch, scan or photograph it (thus turning the sketch into digital form) and load it into your Google Docs space (and inviting us in to view the work). If you have not done that yet, please do it now.
In addition to the drawing and scanning exercise, you should also make sure that you have taken the module entitled 'Files and Folders' in the Basic Skills course. Learning to properly file the digital design work you create, whether it be hand drawn, scanned, photos taken with a digital camera or CAD drawings, is an important step in your learning.

Now to this project.

1. Examine some hand drawn landscape plans

Examine the plans below in terms of their effectiveness in conveying ideas for a space.

Figure 1 (Two images from the same designer)

Example 1

Example 4

Figure 2 - a formal design

Example 3

Figure 3

Plan 2

Figure 4

Plan 1

Figure 5

Plan 3

Figure 7

Plan 4

Figure 8

Figure 9 - hand drawn but with computer generated text added

NZ01

Figure 10

NZ02

deswign

japanese

rear yard

The figure below shows that it is possible to combine hand redering with computer drawn designs. The base drawing has been prepared with GardenCAD software and is typical of those that you will produce later in the course, and the strip angled at 30 degeees has been hand rendered (on top of the base plan).

Hybrid

2. Produce your own hand drawn symbols

After you have examined these plans, take a sheet of reasonable quality paper and your favourite drawing tool (see later for a list of suitable implemenst) and copy some symbols from the drawings above. Do not be shy about this; the symbol can be as crude as you like. In the next module, we will teach you some of the techniques used by professionals to produce high quality symbols. Include an elevation symbol in your group.

Here is a sample of one student's effort - comparing this with the actual symbol used by the professional designer, you can see that there is certainly room for improvement!

Part of Figure 1

It is important at this early stage of your learning to understand that there are many ways of producing those plans, and they will each have a particular style. You will develop your own style during this Diploma of Landscape Design.

Scan your designs and upload them to your Google Docs space.

3. Study some landscape resources from the University of Minnesota

Next we want you to access some of the wonderful material at the University of Minnesota's Landscape Faculty site. The links below give a great insight into why it is that we develop landscape plans.