Planting Design Studio

Planting design treats vegetation as a primary medium of spatial composition rather than decorative afterthought, asking you to think about plants the way a painter thinks about color, mass, and seasonal change. The semester runs as a studio: two main projects (an urban pocket park inspired by an artist, then a thematic park) built up through inspiration boards, plant lists, seasonal diagrams, and planting plans, with regular desk crits, workshops on mood and lighting, and a final jury. It builds on the earlier landscape design studios by narrowing focus from site form to the living material that fills it, and it's where you start defending plant choices on structural, psychological, and sensory grounds — skills the upper-year studios assume you already have.