This comprehensive course offers an in-depth approach to design processes, traditional landscape graphics, and topics related to sustainable landscapes.
Through lectures and demonstrations, learn to produce professional-quality conceptual designs. Utilizing a home landscape, gain practice in process and design drawing. Learn to prepare a base plan by measuring a garden space, translating measurements to scale, and drafting a base plan. Get acquainted with design tools and online sources of information that are key to producing practical designs. In a final project, develop a creative yet feasible solution for a given site.
This course concludes with a small-group workshop with instructor Dan Maffei in which he will critique and provide feedback to participants’ work.
Certificate Information
This course is a required core component of our Landscape Design Certificate and may be taken only after completing the Introduction to Graphic Communications prerequisite.
Course Schedule
Tuesdays, March 17–April 28, 2026
4:00–6:30 pm
Additionally, students will choose 1 of 2 online workshop days:
Tuesday, May 5, 4:00–7:00 pm
OR Wednesday, May 6, 4:00–7:00 pm
Students will have access to recordings of the weekly lectures and online learning material for six months from the last day of class.
Location
Online, with 8 live-streamed sessions
Instructor
Danilo Maffei
With a background in public horticulture, landscape contracting, education, and civic leadership, Danilo Maffei brings to each project a positive and practical perspective on the way gardens enrich our experience and engagement with people and places. As a graduate of the Professional Horticulture Program at Longwood Gardens, Maffei specializes in creating outdoor spaces that feel natural, purposeful, and perfectly suited to their setting. By choosing plants and materials that complement both the landscape and the architecture, he finds ways to seamlessly connect the built environment with nature—transforming the seemingly impossible into reality.
In addition to leading his firm, he serves as a judge at the Philadelphia Flower Show, is a past president of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), and has held numerous volunteer and elected board positions locally.
