If you have a little spare time on your hands, why not use it creatively and constructively and finally get round to becoming the master gardener or garden designer you've always aspired to be? Whether you’re considering retraining, looking for inspiration for your pots and borders or simply want to give your houseplants some loving care, here is a round-up of some of the best online courses to try.
There are now some excellent horticulture courses that you can study from the comfort of your own home. They are a great way to get direct access to top industry professional – MasterClass, Learning with Experts and Create Academy in particular all offer a range of horticulture courses hosted by renowned experts in their fields, and many colleges now offers online courses.
More on garden courses:
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The best horticulture courses
The best garden design courses
The best online garden design courses
Best for absolute beginners
Ron Finley Teaches Gardening
MasterClass.com
Ron Finley, the self-proclaimed Gangster Gardener, has long been a rebel with a cause. His clash with LA City Council over the kerbside garden he’d planted in the south of the city led to a change in the city’s by-laws and set Ron on an edible gardening crusade. Now he’s joined the distinguished list of tutors for online school MasterClass with a ten-part gardening course. Although the emphasis is on growing your own food, Ron offers a great all-round introduction with advice on transforming nutrient-poor soil into fertile ground, propagation and turning whatever you have to hand, from a boot to a drawer, into a planter. Each module lasts between eight and 20 minutes, making the course ideal to fit around other commitments, and comes with a downloadable PDF workbook.
MasterClass is a subscription-based platform that gives you unlimited access to all of its courses, so you can also take cooking classes with Yotam Ottolenghi, acting lessons from Natalie Portman or get writing tips from Neil Gaiman. The minimum subscription is for a year but if you decide it’s not for you, MasterClass offers a full refund within the first 30 days of purchase.
Best for budding botanists
Getting Started With… Botany,
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
If you’ve ever wondered what exactly is going on inside a plant or want to know more about the amazing diversity of plants on the planet then maybe a course on basic botany is for you. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh offers a short online course that works both as an introduction to its certificate and diploma in botany and is also an engaging and comprehensive introduction to the subject in itself.
The course is self-guided with tutor support through nine units that cover topics such as plant diversity, seeds, plant processes, roots and stems, leaves, plant reproduction and botanical classification, with tips on plant identification and an introduction to the investigative skills a botanist requires. Alongside the online learning there are also some fun practical tasks to complete in your own time.
The cost is £80, which gives you access to all materials and support for six months so you can work through the units at your own pace. There is some crossover with the RHS Level 2 Certificate unit on plant classification, structure, and function, but this course is more practical and less theoretical.
Find out more about the course at www.rgbe.org.uk/getting-started-with-botany-online
Other courses at RGBE:
Best for perfecting perennial borders
Planting the Piet Oudolf Way,
Learning with Experts
For more experienced gardeners who are looking to expand their knowledge, Learning with Experts has an excellent selection of specialist, garden-related courses from flower photography to natural beekeeping. One of the highlights is this opportunity to learn at the feet of New Perennial master Piet Oudolf. Co-hosted by Noel Kingsbury and filmed in Piet’s own garden, Hummelo, when it’s at its peak in September, Planting the Piet Oudolf Way is divided into four sections that explore plant structure, plant combinations, seasonality and planting by region – all with corresponding assignments to follow in your own time.
You can start the course whenever you want and take part in an online interactive classroom of no more than 20 other students with whom you can group chat and direct message in a collaborative learning environment. There are two price options: the Peer option costs £35 and comes with lifetime access to the videos, notes and online classroom, while the Expert option for £165 also includes four weeks of access to Noel, who will guide you through the course and provide personal feedback on your planting plans, and you’ll also receive a certificate of completion.
Find out more about the course at www.learningwithexperts.com/gardening/courses/piet-oudolf-garden-design-course
Other Learning with Experts gardening courses:
Best for plant fanatics
Online Gardening Course with Jimi Blake,
Hunting Brook Gardens
Jimi Blake is one of Ireland’s best-known gardeners, who for the past 20 years has been rewriting the rules on how to combine plants at his Hunting Brook Gardens, south of Dublin. Jimi runs a range of courses at the garden throughout the year, but for those unable to attend in person, he has combined his of his recorded courses, with monthly live classes and 'mastermind group access' to create a membership program. You'll learn everything there is to know about building the garden of your dreams and how to keep it beautiful 365 days of the year, including plant selection and planting design, successional planting and propagation.
All the courses were filmed extensively over a year at Hunting Brook Gardens. There's a 14-day trial with full access to the entire course so that you can decide if the course is right for you. Thereafter the course costs €89 per month or €449 a year.
Best for growing your own
No Dig Gardening and Growing Success,
Charles Dowding
One of the positives to have come out of lockdown was that more of us realised the benefits of growing our own food. But if you’re serious about self-sufficiency, or just want to improve on next year’s crops, then a little learning goes a long way, especially if your tutor is Charles Dowding.
Charles has long been one of the leading exponents of no dig gardening, which he says will not only save you time, but is also an easy way of enhancing soil drainage, moisture retention and root health. His online course No Dig Gardening is a thorough introduction to the subject aimed at beginners and experienced gardeners alike. The 19 lessons are divided into six modules that show you how to eradicate weeds, feed soil, make compost, and create cropping plans for small spaces.
Charles also offers two other online courses – Skills for Growing and From Seed to Harvest. Each course costs £95.
Best for designing your own garden
Design Your Own Garden,
Inchbald School of Design
Whether you’re considering a career in garden design or just want to come up with a plan for your own personal sanctuary, a short garden design course is a great place to start. Design Your Own Garden from Inchbald School of Design is a flexible, 13-week online course that takes you step-by-step through the design process, with a teacher:student ratio of 1:8. You’ll explore concepts of colour, form and texture, learn about using hard landscaping, structures and water features, and by the end you’ll have a design for your own space with a planting plan specifically suited to your garden conditions.
Courses start in January, April and September and you’ll need to commit to around four hours each week. Throughout the 12-week period, you’ll receive specialist guidance and advice from an assigned personal tutor, as well as unlimited access to course materials and discussion forums where you can exchange ideas with other students and your tutor.
The course isn’t cheap at £1,260, but Inchbald is an SGD-approved educator with hugely experienced teaching staff, and this is a course that will equip you with the both confidence and skills to study for a diploma or degree. It will also help you decide if garden design is the career for you before investing in a longer course. Here's our round up of the best garden design courses.
Best for the houseplant nervous
The House Plant Revolution James Wong’s Guide to Indoor Gardening,
Create Academy
Can house plants really help turn our homes into healthier, happier places? The eminently likeable ethnobotanist James Wong seems to think so; he is so enthusiastic he shares his flat with 500 of them. He’s also devised a course for the online creative school Create Academy that helps to dispel much of the mystery around keeping them happy, which as he points out is often less complicated than we imagine, especially once we understand the importance of light and how best to water them.
Divided into 20 different lessons, the course includes advice on caring for different groups of houseplants, such as succulents and cacti, ferns and orchids, how to mimic different habitats from Bornean rainforest canopies to Amazonian rivers, how to plant up a terrarium and a living wall, and where best to source your plants. £79.
Best for career changers
RHS Level 2 Qualifications,
Learning with Experts and Best in Horticulture
Are you thinking about a career change or the possibility of turning your hobby into a business? There are many routes into careers in both gardening and garden design but whatever career path you choose, to take your first step should be to firm up your plant knowledge by studying for the RHS Level 2 Certificate in the Principles and Practices of Horticulture. It is made up of two separate certificates - Certificate in Practical Horticultureand theCertificate in the Principles of Plant Growth and Development.You can find details of colleges that run the theory courses on the RHS website and there are now several providers that allow you study for RHS Level 2 Certificate in the Principles of Plant Growth and Development online (you will need to study for the Practical Horticulture certificate in person).
Learning with Experts offers the new RHS Level 2 qualification in eight segments. You can start the course at any time, and study at your own pace. You can join a small friendly online classroom and interact with other students on your course.
You'll be taught by Dr Noel Kingsbury and Tom Cole - both qualified horticulture experts with experience teaching RHS students, and RHS approved tutors. It costs £995.
BEST in Horticulture also offers the RHS Level 2 Certificate in the Principles of Plant Growth and Development online. It costs £760 and is divided into two units. You can begin to study at any point in the year-your enrolment is for 18 months.Enrolment gives you online access and tutor support, access to an online classroom with downloadable course notes, revision workbooks, past paper questions and online self-test quizzes. Here is our list of the best horticulture courses.
Best for keen gardeners
Naturalistic Garden Design Masterclass
Create Academy
An opportunity to explore the building blocks of garden design with one of the UK’s most celebrated designers and horticulturists, Dan Pearson. In his first ever online course, he explains how to create a considered planting palette by plottingplants for optimum structure, layering and coverage, choosing the right plants for your ecosystem, and creating year-round interest. The course is broken down in 27 10-15 minute lessons and comes with downloadable workbooks. It has no fixed start date and offers lifetime access. £147.
createacademy/courses/dan-pearson
Best for the planet
Earthed is a nature skills platform founded as part of the Initiative Earth charity. It aims to give anyone, anywhere access to the skills they need to restore their local environment and grow food. On the platform, members donate what they feel to access practical courses led by teachers from around the world that include no-dig expert Charles Dowding, gardener and activist Tayshan Hayden-Smith and urban grower Alessandro Vitale. Learn how to grow food (including mushrooms and microgreens), restore your local river, harvest rainwater, start a farmers’ market, urban garden, reforest, increase biodiversity, prevent droughts or floods, defend against wildfires or desertification and more.
Earthed members are encouraged to take part in community activities and forums. The platform is free to those who need it, while donations support the charity and the Earthed teachers and will ultimately help establish an Action Fund from which members can apply for grants for local projects. By 2033, it aims to have enabled one million people to actively participate in the restoration of their local environments.
Gardens Illustrated Masterclass
Our series of online masterclass events get up virtually up close with the experts. You can watch them live (with the opportunity to pose questions) or watch them online afterwards. Previous speakers have included Katy Merrington, Cultural Gardener at the Hepworth Wakefield, Fergus Garrett, head gardener at Great Dixter and Troy Scott Smith, head gardener at Sissinghurst.
In 2023, the speakers included The 2023 series features planting expert James Hitchmough, flower farmer Rachel Siegfried and garden designer Jo Thompson.For more information and to watch the latest masterclasses on demand, head to our Gardens Illustrated Masterclass page.
If you want to fill your home as well as your garden with beautiful blooms and greenery, why not take a look at the UK's best flower subscription services and our favourite plant delivery boxes?
