Planting What Where- Short Course

Sneak Peek

The Planting What Where short course will provide you with an understanding of plant knowledge that will help you select plants that are right for your garden.

Whether you are a professional or a home gardener, this course will help ensure that you are not wasting time and money by selecting the wrong plants for your location.

Plant selection is an important part of creating a beautiful and functional garden. With careful selection and well thought out planting schemes you can minimise maintenance, disease and prevent over-planting. Over-planting is one of the most easily made mistakes in a garden. This is especially so for large trees that could end up being very costly to remove.

This self guided short course will go through the essentials of plant selection and planting placement including plant selection, plant establishment methods, identifying problems, solutions for wet areas, gardening in the shade, designing windbreaks, hedges and screens in the garden, plants for dry gardens, plants ideal for coastal regions, trees and shrub selection, small garden design, plants for other situations, lawns and living garden art.

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Course Lessons

This short course covers the following 13 lessons:

1. Plant Selection

• Planting strategies

2.  Plant Establishment Methods

• Ways to help plants get established
• Techniques for planting sloped areas
• Planting arid sites
• Rehabilitating damaged soils in the home garden

3.  Detecting Problems

• Pests
• Diseases
• First: conduct an inspection
• Second: take note of the environment
• Third: identify the problem
• Fourth: treat the problem
• Review what you have been learning
• Solutions for wet areas
• What can cause wet areas in your garden?
• Problems with wet areas
• Overcoming problems with boggy or wet areas

4.  Plants for Wet/Boggy Sites

• How to keep the soil wet all year
• Plants that grow in permanently wet soil
• Plants that tolerate wet in winter and drier soil in summer
• Creating a bog garden
• Construction of water gardens
• Plants for water gardens
• Review what you have been learning
• Gardening in the Shade
• Ferns

5.  Shade trees

• Deciduous or semi deciduous trees
• Evergreen shade trees

6.  Windbreaks Hedges and Screens

• Hedges
• Windbreaks

7.  Plants for Dry Gardens

• Gardening in dry condition
• Design and planting a fire break

8.  Coastal Gardens

• Dealing with salt
• Creating wind breaks
• Hardy seaside plants

9.  Trees and Shrubs

• Evergreen trees
• Cool conifers
• Deciduous trees for autumn colour
• Shrubs in the landscape
• Examples of long flowering plants
• Shrubs that flower in autumn
• What flowers in winterLiving Christmas trees

10.  Fitting More in a Small Garden

• How to fit more in a small garden
• Small trouble free plants
• Space-saving decoration
• Go up
• Expand your garden
• Colours
• Design your garden to appear bigger

11.  Plants for Various Situations

• Frost hardy plants
• Hardy plants for inner city gardens
• Plants for pets
• Long narrow areas

12.  Lawns

• Choosing the right lawn
• Turf varieties

13.  Living Garden Art

• Living art
• How to make a hedge
• Miniature/table top gardens
• Using junk in living gardens

FINAL EXAM

How our short courses work?

• You may enrol any time of day or night
• You can start studying immediately or later (as you wish)
• You can configure your study sessions at any length and frequency you wish
• Work through at your own pace
• Complete the course in as little as 20 hours- or more if you want to undertake optional additional studies
• Help desk -email anytime; emails answered every workday [email protected]
• Automated self assessment tests pop up at the end of each lesson. You can attempt these as many times as you wish; and each time, upon completion, you can see your results
• At the end of the whole course, you are presented with a major automated examination which can be attempted online, anywhere, anytime
• If you achieve a 60% pass in the exam, you immediately receive a downloadable certificate of completion with your name on it.

Who is this course for?

• Amateur gardeners
• Professional horticulturists, nursery workers, gardeners
• Farmers and land managers
• Developers, engineers, architects and planners
• Anyone else who works with plants

Example Pages from the Study Guide