The term gardener is also used to describe garden designers and
landscape architects, who are involved chiefly in the design of gardens, rather than the practical aspects of horticulture.
Garden design is considered to be an art in most cultures, distinguished from gardening, which generally means
garden maintenance.
Vita Sackville-West,
Gertrude Jekyll and
William Robinson were garden designers as well as gardeners. Garden design is the creation of a plan for the construction of a garden, in a design process. The product is the garden, and the garden designers attempt to optimize the given general conditions of the soil, location and
climate, ecological, and geological conditions and processes to choose the right plants in corresponding conditions. The design can include different themes such as perennial,
butterfly,
wildlife,
Japanese,
water,
tropical, or
shade gardens. In 18th-century Europe, country estates were refashioned by landscape gardeners into
formal gardens or landscaped park lands, such as at
Versailles, France, or
Stowe Gardens, England. Today, landscape architects and garden designers continue to design both private garden spaces, residential estates and parkland, public parks and parkways to site planning for campuses and corporate office parks. Professional landscape designers are certified by the
Association of Professional Landscape Designers. ==Maintenance==