ONLINE COURSEDESIGN YOUR DREAM GARDEN
A self-paced course for anyone who wants to stop imagining their ideal garden & start creating it
4 MODULES · 7 WORKSHEETS · 4 GARDEN VIDEOS · LIFETIME ACCESS · A$197
You know that feeling when you scroll past a stunning garden and think — why does theirs look effortless and mine feels impossible?
It's not because they have a design degree. It's not because they hired someone. And it's definitely not because they have some magical green thumb you were born without.
It's because they have a framework. A way of thinking about their garden that turns an overwhelming blank space into a series of clear, confident decisions.
That's exactly what this course gives you.
what makes this course different?
Most garden design advice tells you what to do. This course teaches you how to think so that every decision you make in your garden, now and for the rest of your life, comes from a place of confidence rather than paralysis.
You'll learn concepts that are fundamental to beautiful garden design. The idea of pools and streams (living zones connected by paths) that transforms a chaotic space into a garden with rooms, mystery and flow. The borrowed view - using what exists beyond your fence line, both the beautiful and the ugly, to your advantage. Sight lines and focal points that pull you magnetically through a garden from one space to the next.
These are the frameworks professional garden designers use. Taught in plain language, applied to your specific garden, by someone who has spent a decade building a wild and beautiful garden from a bare, blank slate.
"I believe that gardens can, and should, be very personal places — nothing at all like what you see when people employ strangers to landscape low-maintenance backyards.
Our gardens should be places that really mean something to us; the people who create them, use them, and enjoy them."
— Casey, from the course
what’s inside the course
🌿 Module 1 — Your garden vision
Before paths or plant lists, you need to know how you want your garden to feel. We start by creating a mood board that captures your garden's essence, mapping your living zones, and building a vision that anchors every decision you make from here. Because a garden without vision is just a yard.
🌿 Module 2 — What you're working with
The best garden designs start by working with the constraints that are already there. You'll learn to read your borrowed views (the beautiful ones to enhance and the ugly ones to obscure), assess your existing plants, understand slope and shape, and map the sunlight that dictates everything. Module 2 helps turn decision paralysis into concrete first moves.
🌿 Module 3 — Designing without fear
This is where it gets exciting! Using the concept of pools and streams, you'll divide your garden into rooms, create sight lines that pull the eye from one space to the next, add focal points that give your garden its soul, and (crucially) sketch your design from within your garden rather than on paper. If scaled drawings freak you out (me too!), this module will be a welcome relief!
🌿 Module 4 — Planting your garden
A design is nothing without plants. I'll walk you through choosing plants for your specific microclimates, building your garden like a body; skeleton first, then muscles, then skin, and the styling tactics that make a garden look full and beautiful rather than sparse and chaotic. Repetition, contrast, presence, colour, layering and spacing: all taught through examples from my own garden.
🌿 Four video walkthroughs — filmed in my own garden
Each module includes a short video (3-5 minutes) filmed in my own Perth garden, where I walk you through the key concepts in a real, lived-in space rather than a theoretical one. Seeing the ideas in action - the borrowed views, the pools and streams, the layered planting - makes everything click in a way that reading alone doesn't.
🌿 Downloadable worksheets Seven PDF worksheets to work through each exercise in your own garden - living zone checklists, sun mapping tools, a borrowed view assessment, plant lists for different conditions, Perth-specific tree guides, and a guide to edimentals (edible ornamental plants).
"There are no irrevocable mistakes in a garden. No garden is ever finished. The whole point of growing one isn't to create the perfect garden — it is to discover the myriad joys that lie in the process."
— Casey, from the course
This course is for you if…
You want a garden that feels joyful, personal and unmistakably yours (not a minimalist landscaper's monoculture that looks the same as every other new build on the street).
You're frustrated by second-guessing every decision and want to start confidently designing your garden
You have a blank block, an inherited mess, or a garden that's been quietly driving you mad for years.
You want someone to walk you through the whole process, from the first mood board to the last plant placement, without making it feel impossibly complicated.
And it's especially for you if you've ever stood in your garden with a cup of tea, looked around, and thought: this could be so much more than it is…but how???
This course is not for you if…
It's not for you if you want instant results. This course is about building something that grows more beautiful with time, and that process takes the time it takes.
It's not suited to courtyards or balcony gardens. The framework works best for gardens with some outdoor space to divide into zones and rooms.
And it's not for you if you want someone else to design your garden. This course is about the deep satisfaction of designing it yourself.
A LITTLE BIT…about me
hi, i’m casey
I’m a writer, gardener and cookbook author based in Perth, Western Australia.
I’m passionate about demystifying gardening and helping people find the confidence to grow a garden they love, without the complexities, overwhelm and nit-picking that beginner gardeners often receive.
I believe that gardening should be fun, unpretentious and stress-free—and that our gardens are at their best when they’re wild, organic and full of life.
I designed every corner of my own garden myself. Not because I had any particular training, but because I was curious, patient, and willing to make mistakes.
This course is everything I learned.
It was not that long ago that humans existed within nature - that we lived alongside plants and animals, learning to understand them, relating to them, working with them.
I truly believe that for many of us, there is a deep and often unacknowledged yearning to make nature a greater part of our lives once more.
However you decide to design your garden, and whatever you decide to use it for, the goal should always be to find happiness out there. To grasp at moments of peace, creativity, awe and solitude.
As it grows over the years, I hope your garden serves as a constant reminder that there is a fragile and incredible natural world just waiting for us to remember to look for it. Sunshine, new roses, the first cabbage white butterflies of spring, the last autumn leaf fall before winter, the call of a magpie in the morning.
I hope your garden brings you these little joys in spades, every day, for as long as it grows with you.
Happy gardening,
Casey xx
lifetime access
self-paced
start today &
return whenever you need it
4 MODULES · 7 WORKSHEETS · 4 GARDEN VIDEOS · LIFETIME ACCESS · A$197
Frequently Asked questions
-
Anyone who looks at their garden and has no idea where to start, or who has started but keeps second-guessing every decision. No prior gardening or design experience needed.
-
None at all. The whole point of this course is to give you a framework for thinking about your garden that makes the design process feel manageable rather than terrifying. If you can make a mood board and hold a pen, you're qualified!
-
Most free garden advice tells you what to plant or what to do. This course teaches you how to think about your garden, using frameworks like pools and streams, borrowed views and sight lines that professional designers use but rarely explain. Once you understand these concepts, every decision you make in your garden becomes clearer. That's not something you'll find in a blog post.
-
The plant recommendations and some climate references are Perth-specific, but the design frameworks - pools and streams, borrowed views, sight lines, planting techniques - apply to any garden anywhere.
-
The course works best for medium to large gardens. It's not suited to courtyards or balcony gardens, but if you have a backyard of any size you'll find the frameworks useful.
-
That’s entirely up to you! You have lifetime access so there's no rush. Some people work through it in a few weeks, others let it percolate over months. I'd actually recommend the latter - good garden design takes time to think through properly.
-
A pen, some paper, a handful of old bricks or second-hand pavers, and maybe a few pieces of rope. That's genuinely it. No fancy equipment, no special software.
-
Yes! The course walks you through a series of exercises that result in a real, workable garden layout. By the end you'll have a first draft design, a plant shortlist, and the framework to keep refining it as your garden grows and changes.
-
Yes - lifetime access, self-paced, available on any device.