Butter Wakefield

Butter Wakefield spent a decade at Colefax and Fowler before turning to garden design — a route that gave her a deep grasp of scale, texture and colour. She trained at the English Gardening School (with two prizes) and the London College of Garden Design, and in 2016 founded her eponymous studio. She is best known for inventive, character-rich London gardens.

Leading British garden designer

Course

Small Garden Design

Celebrate the beauty and versatility of compact gardens with Butter Wakefield. In this course, you’ll explore three small-scale garden projects, each with a different brief and aesthetic. Butter will guide you through the essential considerations for designing smaller outdoor spaces, offering expert advice for every stage of a project—from concept development, planning, and budgeting to sourcing materials and final installation. With a focus on transforming even the tiniest gardens into thriving sanctuaries filled with native flora and wildlife, this course will help you make the most of any outdoor space.

25 Lessons

Included with membership

Lesson plan — 25 lessons

01 Introduction

01 Meet Butter
02 Introducing the design process

02 The Process - Butter's Garden

03 Aspect & drawing to scale
04 Laying out your existing garden
05 Building a brief
06 Materiality & surfaces
07 Laying out furniture & pots
08 Working with boundaries & trees
09 Planting design - creating structure
10 Planting design - shrubs & mid-level interest
11 Planting design - Butter's favourite bulbs
12 Using water
13 Using light

03 The Results - Butter's Garden

14 A wild city garden - part 1
15 A wild city garden - part 2
16 A perfectly designed terrace

04 Rita Konig's Garden

17 Redesigning a London garden
18 Using moodboards
19 Rita Konig's garden walkthrough

05 A Beautiful Courtyard Garden

20 Planning a courtyard garden - part 1
21 Planning a courtyard garden - part 2
22 Designing a tiny garden
23 The finished courtyard garden - part 1
24 The finished courtyard garden - part 2
25 A brilliantly designed tiny garden - the results

Start learning Watch a free lesson

“On top of being a beautiful garden designer, Butter is a generous teacher. Each course is practical and unfolds in a way that sets the building blocks for creating my own garden design. I especially appreciate the resource list with all the plants. This is a course I’ll watch many times over as I build and grow my courtyard garden.”

“I have subscribed to access all the courses so have watched one on interior design and this one with Butter Wakefield who specialises in small garden design. She has a lovely personality and comes across as being a ve...”

Louise Brown Apr 10, 2026

“I love CreateAcademy. I came in for the gardening and floristry courses, but am also watching an interior design one at present. And the photography course is an absolute must, best I've ever done.”

Wellesley Apr 1, 2026

“What a great investment, I have learned such a lot from the first three courses. My evenings have gone from not being able to find anything that captured my imagination on TV to learning and expanding my knowledge on ...”

sojojo Mar 30, 2026

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