Planting What Where

Know What Plant Will Work Where

Learn how to choose the right plants for various situations. The Planting What Where Short Course is ideal for home gardeners or beginners in the garden design industry and provides a complete learning experience with practical exercises that you can do at home.

This self-guided study program provides learners with the opportunity to understand about plant selection in a short course setting. Using a self-paced, interactive study guide; you can take as much or little time as you wish to complete this course.

As you progress through each lesson; you will be provided with a range of ways you can expand your learning. By choosing what tasks you do and don’t undertake; you can expand in areas that interest you most and skip areas of less interest.

At the end of each lesson, you will be given a short interactive test to undertake, which will provide an indication of how your learning is progressing.  Upon completing the very last lesson, you will be offered a more thorough automated test or examination. This final assessment can be undertaken at any time of day or night; and any day of the week. If you achieve an overall pass, you will be able to obtain a “Certificate of Completion”.

Course Structure

There are 13 lessons in this course:

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 conditions
• 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 winter
• Living Christmas trees