It's not just important to know and be able to identify plants, and to know their proper culture, but what to do with them. Any perennials you buy you will plant somewhere, and likely together with others. The objective then of this activity is to give you experience combining perennials properly into a design.  It is a followup to PSS123 Garden Flowers , with this course or permission of instructor as a prerequisite.  Or it may be combined with the Herbaceous Garden Plants Online course.  One credit

Supplies--required:
pencil (preferably HB to 2B-- they are softer than H or 2H and easier to erase)
eraser (probably more than just the end of a pencil)
graph paper (equal intervals)
ruler
tracing paper
tape (removable)

Supplies--optional
colored pencils
artgum
flexible ruler
better quality tracing paper for final, yellow "flimsy" tracing paper for working
landscape templates

Computer option
If you've had a course in CAD (Computer Assisted Design), and have software available or through a campus department, you may use this for your plans instead of traditional pencial and paper with permission of instructor.
 

Requirements--overall

1. You should chose a site for your design. This might be at home, or a site on campus such as the area behind the greenhouse facing east, or the area between the greenhouse and Stafford Hall.

2. You will need to come up with a design for 1000 square feet. To visualize, this is about the size of the beds along the west side of Stafford, or along 3 sides of the fence at the Hort Farm perennial gardens. This could be one bed such as 10 feet wide and 100 feet long along a border or building, or 5 feet wide and 200 feet long. It could also be a corner bed in roughly a triangle shape. Or it could be several beds roughly totaling 1000 square feet with paths between. These could be formal squares or rectangles, or informal isolated "island" beds shaped roughly like kidney beds or ovals like eggs.

3. You will have to turn in two plans-- first a site plan depicting all that is there now, and the final plan showing exactly what will be planted where.
 

Requirements--Site Plan

This plan is the one you always do first, assessing what is currently existing on the site. This is the one you do on graph paper, to scale. If you don't have a long tape measure, you can pace off distances and approximate them-- get your one foot ruler, take an average step or stride and measure how far this is. (Actually this is used quite a bit in the real world where distances aren't extremely exacting.) You may turn in a photocopy of the site plan if you wish, keeping your original to use in developing your final plan.

This plan should include all the items appropriate, as discussed in lecture notes. Grading will be done partly on completeness, partly on neatness. It as well as the final plan should also be neat, free of smudges, extraneous lines and such. Lines should be straight as drawn with a ruler-- don't just freehand draw edges and borders. If a line is curved, use a template, curved ruler, or other curved object (something like an extension cord might work--fairly firm yet flexible into smooth curves).

Requirements--Final Plan

This is the plan you will present to the instructor. This will be on the tracing paper. The reason for tracing paper is so you can put it on top of the graph paper to work around existing objects and get distances correct. You might also want to use several layers on top of your final plan, one for each month for instance, coloring in what will be in bloom that month (this is not required, but is often helpful in developing a final plan).

The final plan should include those items discussed in lecture. Grading will be done partly on completeness in this respect, also on neatness as above. Grading will also be done on proper use of design principles as discussed in lecture, such as does the plan present a unified picture or is it more like Noah's Ark or a zoo collection with one or two of everything and no apparent order. And grading will be done on proper use of plants. Unless you have a design that uses plants for which few or no cultivars exist, cultivars must be specified. Cultivars are important, even crucial, in flower garden designs so it is not sufficient just to say for instance hostas-- specify which cultivars. There will be so much variation otherwise in color and height that someone can't know what your design will look like. And be able to justify why you chose which plants you did. Perhaps it might be because of soil conditions, light conditions, or a theme. Themes such as gardens for shade, for native plants, for scent, for butterflies, or by color such as a pink garden, might be used and often make designing a bed easier.
 

Grading:  1000 points maximum
20% site plan--consideration of all relevant factors
20% plant selection--appropriate for site and design, use of cultivars
20% design principles & plans--appropriate use of and factors considered
20% neatness--legibility, straight lines, no smudges, etc
20% presentation--this can be oral or written depending on proximity to campus, your schedule and other factors;  organization, justification of why chose design and plants and specific cultivars

due date for plans and final presentation: site plan 11/21/03, final plan 12/15/03

This course is self-study and self-paced, with meetings and consultations TBA as desired and needed.