If you have a little spare time on your hands, why not use it creatively and constructively and finally get round to becoming the master gardener or garden designer you've always aspired to be?
Whether you’re considering retraining, looking for inspiration for your pots and borders or simply want to give your houseplants some loving care, here is a round-up of some of the best online courses to try.
There are now some excellent horticulture courses that you can study from the comfort of your own home. They are a great way to get direct access to top industry professional – MasterClass, Learning with Experts and Create Academy in particular all offer a range of horticulture courses hosted by renowned experts in their fields, and many colleges now offers online courses.
More on garden courses:
- How to become a garden designer
- How to become a gardener
- The best horticulture courses
- The best garden design courses
The best online garden design courses
Best for absolute beginners
Ron Finley Teaches Gardening, MasterClass
- 2 hours 7 minutes
- £120 for an annual membership with access to over 200 classes
- Suitable for all skill levels
After a clash with LA City Council over his kerbside garden led to a change in by-laws, Ron Finley has become a self-proclaimed Gangster Gardener, and now leads his own a 10-part gardening course. The emphasis is on growing your own food, but Ron offers a great all-round introduction with advice on transforming nutrient-poor soil into fertile ground, propagation and turning whatever you have to hand into a planter.
MasterClass is a subscription-based platform that gives you unlimited access to all of its courses, so you can also take cooking classes with Yotam Ottolenghi, acting lessons from Natalie Portman or get writing tips from Neil Gaiman.
Best for budding botanists
Getting Started With Botany, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
- £125 for 24 months access
- 30-40 hours
- Ideal for beginners
If you’ve ever wondered what exactly is going on inside a plant or want to know more about the amazing diversity of plants, a basic botany course could be for you. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh offers this short one as both an introduction to its certificate and diploma in botany, and an engaging introduction to the subject. It's self-guided with tutor support and includes fun practical tasks too.
*There is some crossover with the RHS Level 2 Certificate unit on plant classification, structure, and function, but this course is more practical and less theoretical. Find other courses at RGBE.
Best for perfecting perennial borders
Planting the Piet Oudolf Way, Learning with Experts
- £45 for Peer option, £165 for Expert option
- 7 hours 30 minutes
- Ideal for more experienced gardeners
Learn from the New Perennial master Piet Oudolf in this course, which is filmed in his own garden and co-hosted by Noel Kingsbury. It covers plant structure, plant combinations, seasonality and planting by region and you can join an online classroom of up to 20 other students where you can group chat and direct message for collaborative learning.
Buy the £35 Peer option for lifetime access to videos, notes and online classroom, or the £165 Expert option for four weeks of access to Noel, who will provide personal feedback on your planting plans.
Browse other Learning with Experts gardening courses, which cover everything from propagation to beekeeping.
Best for plant fanatics
Online Gardening Course with Jimi Blake, Hunting Brook Gardens
- €89 per month or €449 a year
- Six courses (over 50 hours)
- Suitable for all skill levels
Jimi Blake is one of Ireland’s best-known gardeners, who for the past 20 years has been rewriting the rules on how to combine plants at his Hunting Brook Gardens, south of Dublin. Jimi runs courses there throughout the year, but he's also combined his of his recorded sessions with monthly live classes and 'mastermind group access' for his membership program.
You'll learn everything there is to know about building the garden of your dreams and how to keep it beautiful all year, including plant selection and planting design, successional planting and propagation.
Best for growing your own
No Dig Gardening, Charles Dowding
- £95
- 6 modules / 19 lessons
- Suitable for all skill levels
If you’re interested in growing your own food, consider this course from the No Dig expert Charles Dowding. He's long been one of the leading exponents of no dig gardening, which he says is is also an easy way of enhancing soil drainage, moisture retention and root health - and will save you time.
This online course is a thorough introduction, teaching you how to eradicate weeds, feed soil, make compost and create cropping plans for small spaces. You may also want to check out Charles Dowding's full selection of gardening courses on growing food.
Best for designing your own garden
Design Your Own Garden, Inchbald School of Design
- £1,260
- 4 hours per week for 13 weeks
- Courses start in January, April and September
- Suitable for all skill levels
Considering a career in garden design or want to come up with a plan for your own personal sanctuary? Try this flexible online course with a teacher:student ratio of 1:8. You’ll explore concepts of colour, form and texture, learn about using hard landscaping, structures and water features, and by the end you’ll have a design for your own space with a planting plan specifically suited to your garden conditions.
The course isn’t cheap at £1,260, but Inchbald is an SGD-approved educator with hugely experienced teaching staff, who will equip you with the confidence and skills to study for a diploma or degree. You'll also get unlimited access to course materials and discussion forums.
Here's our round up of the best garden design courses.
Best for the houseplant nervous
James Wong’s Indoor Gardening Masterclass, Create Academy
- £79 for the course / £15 monthly subscription to access over 1,000 lessons
- 28 lessons / 8 hours
- Suitable for all skill levels
Can house plants really help turn our homes into healthier, happier places? The eminently likeable ethnobotanist James Wong seems to think so; he shares his flat with 500 of them. He also runs this course for Create Academy that helps to dispel much of the mystery around keeping them happy.
Divided into 20 different lessons, it includes advice on caring for different groups of houseplants, such as succulents and cacti, ferns and orchids, how to mimic different habitats from Bornean rainforest canopies to Amazonian rivers, how to plant up a terrarium and a living wall, and where best to source your plants.
You might also enjoy Create Academy's other gardening, floristry and landscaping courses.
Best for career changers
RHS Level 2 Qualification, Learning with Experts
- £955
- Suitable for all skill levels
- Don't need RHS Level 1
Interested in a career change or perhaps you just want to expand your knowledge? There are many routes into gardening and garden design but whatever career path you choose, your first step should be to firm up your plant knowledge with the RHS Level 2 Certificate: Principles of Plant Growth and Development.
Learning with Experts offers the new RHS Level 2 qualification in eight segments. You can start the course at any time and study at your own pace. You can join a small friendly online classroom and interact with other students on your course.
Here's our list of the best horticulture courses.
Best for keen gardeners
Naturalistic Garden Design Masterclass, Create Academy
- £147 for the course / £15 monthly subscription to access over 1,000 lessons
- 27 lessons / 5 hours
- Suitable for all skill levels
An opportunity to explore the building blocks of garden design with one of the UK’s most celebrated designers and horticulturists, Dan Pearson. In his first ever online course, he explains how to create a considered planting palette by plotting plants for optimum structure, layering and coverage, choosing the right plants for your ecosystem and creating year-round interest.
Buy the course and you'll get lifetime access to the resources and downloadable workbooks. Plus, there's no fixed start date. Find out more at Create Academy.
Best budget-friendly choice
The Beginner's Guide to Vegetable Gardening, Udemy
- £39.99 but often on sale
- 24 lectures / 1 hour 46 minutes
- Ideal for beginners
Short, inexpensive gardening courses like this are great for novices looking to learn more - and make lovely gifts for friends and family. This is one of the most popular courses on Udemy, with over 350 five-star reviews, and covers the basics, like which veggies to start with, and when and where to plant them.
You can also find over 100 more gardening courses at Udemy covering a huge range of interesting topics. Handily, you can filter the list by course length, required skill level and customer review scores to find ones you'll love.
Best for the planet
Earthed
- Optional £6 monthly donation to access a selection of courses
- About 35 minutes
- Ideal for beginners
Earthed is part of the Initiative Earth charity and aims to give everyone access to the skills they need to restore their local environment and grow food. Members are encouraged to take part in community activities and forums, and while it's free to those who need it, donations support the charity and, ultimately, members who apply for local project grants.
Course teachers include no-dig expert Charles Dowding, gardener and activist Tayshan Hayden-Smith and urban grower Alessandro Vitale. Here, Alessandro demonstrates how to grow food, as well as restore your local river, harvest rainwater and even start a farmers’ market, among other topics.
If you want to fill your home as well as your garden with beautiful blooms and greenery, why not take a floristry course?
