The Fundamentals of Garden Design

No experience is needed — this course is designed for complete beginners who want to transform their own outdoor space. Jo breaks the process down into simple, achievable steps and shares easy rules of thumb, such as limiting yourself to three materials per area and matching your terrace depth to the height of your doors or windows. Even if you don't know your plants yet, she shows you how to research what thrives locally and build confidence as you go.

Yes — small gardens are Jo Thompson's particular passion, and the course is built around designing compact spaces from start to finish. She demonstrates how to fit multiple functions into just a few square metres, using case studies including a narrow London garden with a terrace, rose-filled beds, a teenage hangout and a pizza oven, and a tiny family plot where a trampoline was swapped for a sculptural multifunctional 'cheese' structure. You'll learn how to use height, staggered screening and multipurpose features so every centimetre earns its place.

Jo teaches you to begin with a written brief before you buy a single plant: who will use the garden, which way it faces, what needs to be hidden or borrowed from the wider landscape, and the practical essentials like storage, bins, an outside tap and lighting cabling. From there you sketch a simple outline plan, divide the space into three or four zones, assign each a function, then join them with a route or path. This 'clarity of thought first' approach stops a small garden from becoming a jumble of disconnected features.

It's taught by award-winning garden designer Jo Thompson, drawing on nearly 30 years of professional practice and real client projects, so you see genuine briefs, sketch plans and finished gardens rather than theory alone. Alongside layout and design fundamentals, Jo covers planting for structure and rhythm, choosing materials that suit your locality, gardening for pollinators and wildlife, and where she finds her own inspiration — from Italian Renaissance gardens to classics like Russell Page's 'The Education of a Gardener'. The emphasis throughout is on keeping things simple so your design is easy to live with and genuinely achievable.

All of our courses are online, meaning that you are able to watch them whenever and wherever suits you best. There is no beginning or finish date and they’re completely self-paced so that you can stop, start and pause each lesson to fit around your own schedule. You can begin watching a course as soon as you purchase it – simply login to your Create Academy account whenever you have a quiet moment to yourself.

Yes! You can rewatch each lesson as many times as you’d like. If you have purchased an individual course, you will have lifetime access to it, so you’ll be able to rewatch and dip in and out of each lesson forever - perfect if you have a busy schedule! If you purchased an annual subscription, you can enjoy full access to all of our lessons until you choose to cancel.

If you have purchased an individual course, you will have life time access.

An annual subscription gives you access to all courses for 12 months from the date of purchase, including those released during that period. Our subscriptions are set to automatically renew after 12 months so you have the benefit of uninterrupted access! If you choose to cancel, you will no longer have access to the platform.

Below each video lesson you’ll find the link to download the corresponding workbook pages. If you’d like to download the whole workbook at once, simply navigate to the very first lesson in the course and click 'Download Workbook'.

We’re on a mission to help you build your creative confidence and live a more creatively fulfilled life. Through beautifully curated video courses, we give you unprecedented access to the expertise of today’s best designers, makers, gardeners and chefs - allowing you to unlock your creativity whenever and wherever you want.

Yes – all our courses are available internationally. Please note, all our courses are taught in English.