Portfolio submission guidance: landscape architecture courses

For applicants to Landscape Architecture BA (K3K4), Landscape Architecture BSc (KC39) and Landscape Architecture MLA (K310)

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What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is a document that showcases a selection of your unique, creative work.

It is a document that reveals your personality, thinking processes, critical analysis and passions.

Landscape architecture is a diverse industry and your portfolio is an opportunity to showcase your particular interests and strengths.

A portfolio is an accumulation of work that exemplifies your beliefs, skills, qualifications, education and experience.

What should your portfolio contain?

As a minimum, please include:

  • up to 10 drawings, which explore the qualities of three places that are of interest to you
  • two of the places should be public landscapes (for example a public park or nature reserve)
  • one should be your street – this should be in a medium of your choice and accompanied by a short piece of text (maximum 200 words)

Your portfolio should include a cover page, with your name and UCAS number, along with your chosen images and creative work.

Please do include annotations to help us understand why you have selected each example and the process you took to produce the work.

If you are not studying an art or design subject

Don’t worry, we would still like to see a portfolio from you.

  • Your portfolio can be a combination of up to three short pieces of writing about landscapes, as well as three attempts at visual work (only one of which can be photography).
  • One of your pieces of visual work should include the street exercise mentioned below.

Be creative: explore different media

Your portfolio should contain eye-level sketches, in which you may want to include:

  • observation of detail, communicating place at different seasons or times of day
  • annotations of how a place is used and your own reactions.

Be creative and try to use different media, if possible. Some examples include:

Selection of materials which can be used for portfolios; clay models, embroidery, sketching, painting, papercut model, physical modelling, digital software, phtoography

Get sketching: explore three places

Include observational sketches made in both public projects and nature reserves. Look at the two examples shown below for inspiration.

Public park
Example sketch of a public park showing the urban furniture, hardscape paving and planting
Nature reserve 
Sketching example showing a runner in a nature park

Get to know your street

Observe the environment around you; this can be either your own street or a street near to where you live.

Review the images below for some ideas of questions you may want to consider. What else do you think is significant to note about your street?

Example street showing the questions a landscape architect might ask
Example street sketch showing the questions a Landscape Architect might ask

Observations through the seasons

Consider how the seasons might impact the environment you've chosen - trees make the streets look different in every season, especially in autumn when they change colour. 

Representation of how a leaf changes throughout the four seasons

Submitting your portfolio

Your portfolio should include a cover page, with your name and UCAS ID, along with your chosen images and creative work.

Each file must be clearly labelled with your full name and with your UCAS ID or application number.

The total size of the portfolio you submit should be 6MB or less.

We cannot accept archived files (ZIP, RAR etc).

We prefer you to combine all of your work into one file, allowing you to control the order that your work is seen in and to add a title page or contents page.

We accept the following file formats:

  • Microsoft Word document (.doc /.docx)
  • PowerPoint presentation (.ppt/.pptx)
  • Portable Document Format (.pdf)
  • We will also accept individual image files (.gif, .jpg, .pdf)

We are unable to review videos (eg animations or films). If you wish to include them, please submit a selection of still images/story board.

Further resources

Related information

How to apply