Landscape Designer Resume Example & Writing Guide

As a landscape designer, you have an eye for creating beautiful outdoor spaces and you’re ready to grow your career! With experience working on residential, business, or governmental properties, you need to personalize your landscape designer resume to conform to the environment you are aiming to work in.

Along with adaptable wording from our landscape designer resume sample, this writing guide will enable you to design an impressive landscape designer resume. Our tips and hints can help you:

• Take into consideration what landscape designers do
• Apply the universally appropriate structure and best format to your landscape designer resume
• Nail each resume section by presenting your achievements in the best light: header, profile, work history, education and skills
• Express your creativity in a professional layout and design

Read on to take your career to new heights with your dream job!

What does a landscape designer do?

As a landscape designer, you are a design professional who creates aesthetically and functionally pleasing architectural designs. You work with clients to understand their needs and goals prior to creating detailed plans. This means you must be excellent at customer service and communication as well as knowledgeable about plants and outdoor design. 

Whether working as an employer with your own business, or on an employee team, your expertise is integral to the planning and development of public parks, gardens, playgrounds, residential areas, college campuses, and public spaces. You also ensure that the locations of buildings, roads, walkways, flowers, shrubs, and trees within these settings are appropriate. These elements must not only be easy to use but also harmonious with the natural environment.

How to write a landscape designer resume

Job seekers with design expertise often appreciate the orderly structure that almost all resumes have in common. These are the essential components:

• Header
• Summary
• Employment history section
• Education section
• Skills section

Before taking a closer look at each of these resume parts, one at a time, here are some general guidelines for an edge-winning resume.

• Keep it concise — no more than one page.
• Keep it relevant by trimming down the content to focus on made-to-measure talents fitting the specific job.
• Keep your focus firmly fixed on just one job application at a time.
  • Each customized version of your landscape designer resume should precisely match the job ad.
  • From the same source, identify keywords that you can incorporate liberally, but logically, to avoid rejection by the electronic applicant tracking systems (ATS) that hiring organizations commonly use for screening job applications submitted online.

Choosing the best resume format for a landscape designer

The reverse chronological resume format is generally ideal for the nine out of 10 job seekers whose work experience has grown progressively over time in employee roles. It is also preferred by recruiters as an easy–to-follow overview of who you worked for and what you accomplished, dated in order from most recent to earliest employer.

Self-employed landscape designers could be an exception to this rule if they are seeking freelance or consistent contract work. The functional resume format lets you emphasize skills, or even projects, rather than workplaces. And the middle-of-the-road hybrid resume format combines a chronological experience section with a skills list that’s more prominent than usual. 

Resume header

Needless to say, first impressions are crucially important for landscape designer job applicants. Looking professional, organized and accessible up front can be achieved with a distinctive resume header, while everything else on the page is that much more inviting to read. 

Above all, the key information in your resume header is what hiring managers will come back to when making interview arrangements. So don’t overlook or downplay this opportunity to prominently and stylishly display your name, occupation, contact information and LinkedIn profile URL. It’s also a great location for linking to your online portfolio of project samples. 

Reinforce the impact with cohesive design elements in your cover letter header. 

Landscape designer resume profile example

Just as your landscape design portfolio shows off your best projects, your resume profile should show off your best professional attributes. You have a chance here — right off the top — to tell prospective employers a bit about who you are and how you work.

The profile, also known as the summary or personal statement, is a short paragraph — about 100-200 words — that should focus on what you bring to the job as an employee and designer. Use strong descriptive language to highlight your proudest projects and your professional style. You should add a sentence about your design philosophy as well. 

A landscape designer resume should clearly convey a candidate's ability to combine art with science in site plans and the creation of landscape designs. Be sure that the profile includes any information you do not want a potential employer to miss. “Wow factors” will compel potential employers to keep on reading. 

Below is a landscape designer sample summary you can adapt as it suits

Employment history sample

How do you compose a great employment history section for your landscape designer resume?

Whether you work for yourself or within another organization, your work experience section tells a lot about your career and aptitude for learning and growth. For each job, describe the scope of the project, your contributions, and the horticultural knowledge you used. Be as specific as possible. That means not just giving the dimensions of the plot you landscaped, whether small-or large-scale, but also the flowers, trees, and other plants you used.

Each bullet listing in this section should add to your desirability as a candidate. If you have project management experience, make sure you highlight that here. There is no need to repeat skills. Remember that you want the maximum information in the minimum amount of space. Use powerful action verbs that showcase your abilities and skills. 

Your employment history should emphasize positions related to design. There's no need to include former positions that do not reflect transferable skills for a landscape designer. 

Below is a landscape designer employment history resume sample you can modify.

Landscape designer resume education example

While there are no formal education requirements for landscape designers, most have at least an associate’s degree in horticulture, botany, or soil science. (Sometimes degrees/classes in design are also applicable.) Many have bachelor’s or master’s degrees, and may combine some design classes with their education in flora. Landscape designers, unlike landscape architects, do not need to be licensed.

In your resume's education section, you should list all pertinent degrees, certifications, and professional memberships. Any classes, seminars, or training programs you have attended that relate to your field and honors or distinctions should be noted here as well. If you hold a degree higher than a bachelor's degree, you may leave out your high school information. You can list certifications here, or create a separate section highlighting them. 

See the landscape designer resume education sample content below.

CV skills example

Your resume's skills section provides an overview of the assets and abilities you bring to the job. Mimic the wording for skills listed in the job description to let your potential employer know you have what they seek. Err on the side of high-level skills that may give you an advantage over other candidates.

Pay attention to the exact wording used in the listing! Be mindful of alternative abbreviations and terms.

Create a list of all the skills and attributes you bring to the job. Divide them into soft skills — those interpersonal and organizational skills all workers need, and hard skills — those specific to your field. Include a mix of these two when you formulate your skills list. Remember to personalize this section to match the job listing.

Check out a landscape designer CV sample for the skills section below.

Resume layout, design, and formatting

As a design professional, your resume must look fabulous! While it is true that you can get more creative than those in less artistic professions, you must also remember that recruiters are most concerned with finding your information in a scan of about 10 seconds. If you choose form over function, you may lose out. Use your knowledge of design principles to keep your resume legible, clean, and professional-looking with a touch of flair.

Our creative category of resume templates are a great place for you to begin, along with the easy-to-use resume builder tool.  Keep these tips in mind:

• If you’re using text editors like Word, do not put information into headers and footers that human resources software may not be able to scan. Alternatively, online builder tools like Resume.io’s take care of the technical pitfalls for you.
• Have a friend or colleague proofread each version of your resume and cover letter before applying for a job
• Strive to save your completed resume as a PDF file to avoid introducing formatting errors between word processing programs.

Key takeaways

1. With little or no employment growth projected for landscape designers, an exceptional resume is the best way to differentiate yourself in the competitive talent pool.
2. Address the specific needs and expectations of each prospective employer or client in each custom-tailored version of your landscape designer resume.
3. Your resume’s employment history and skills sections should reinforce the “why hire me” connection you make with hiring managers up front in the profile.
4. Using a field-tested resume template is the easiest way to create a visually impressive document that’s inviting to read.