Landscape Architecture with Foundation

Landscape architecture is the discipline of shaping outdoor environments, from urban parks and streetscapes to ecological corridors, flood-resilient infrastructure, and the spaces between buildings in new communities. It draws on design, ecology, planning, and environmental science to create places that serve both people and nature, and it operates across scales from the intimate detail of a courtyard garden to the strategic planning of a whole river catchment. Landscape architects are central to how cities respond to climate change, how biodiversity is protected and restored, and how public space is made meaningful and inclusive.

This four-year full-time degree at the University of Gloucestershire includes a foundation year element and grounds your studies in practice from the outset. You will work on real sites and real briefs, developing your design creativity and professional practice skills through studio-based projects that engage with genuine landscape challenges. You will learn to move between drawing and making, digital modelling and fieldwork, and the spatial imagination of design and the analytical frameworks of ecology and planning.

The programme has a strong connection to sites and opportunities in Gloucestershire and the South West, giving your studies real geographic specificity and local professional context.

Landscape architecture graduates are in increasing demand. The profession sits at the intersection of responses to climate change, biodiversity net gain requirements, urban regeneration, and housing growth, all of which require practitioners who can design at scale with ecological intelligence. Graduates work in landscape consultancies, local authorities, development agencies, environmental bodies, and planning departments.

Many go on to work in design practice alongside architects and urban designers, while others move into environmental impact assessment, heritage landscape management, or ecological planning. Postgraduate study is an option for those wishing to deepen their research expertise or specialise in a particular strand of the discipline.