Landscape architecture is a profession requiring university education. There are more than 250 schools of landscape architecture world wide. Despite the common objectives, the schools differ depending on their focus of education. There are schools with art orientation, those concentrated on spatial planning, or environmental protection, engineering, or explicitly focused on bioengineering. In Serbia, landscape architecture education started at the Faculty of Forestry, which influenced its expressive biotechnical orientation, but the situation is changing and the courses are being adjusted to the world trends. Also, some new similar schools are emerging, which announces the competition on the educational market. Still, disregarding the diversity, all schools of landscape architecture always offer multidisciplinary knowledge. The students study the sciences related to the landscape and acquire the knowledge and skills of landscape management. A typical program of landscape architecture study includes: natural sciences essential for the landscape study (geology, pedology, climatology, phytocoenology, ecology, etc.), the knowledge of biology and plants (dendrology, herbaceous plants, etc.), planning (spatial and town planning, landscape planning, planning the system of green spaces and recreation spaces, planning nature protection and environment in general), designer skills (manual and computer techniques of drawing, theory of form, garden design, open town spaces, design of large recreation spaces and parks), engineering knowledge and construction technique (study of materials, landscape architecture constructions, landscape engineering, etc.), landscape management (maintenance of green spaces, landscaping, etc.), as well as the necessary knowledge of culturology and social sciences (history of landscape architecture and art, sociology of space, etc.). In Serbia , landscape architecture is studied at several faculties, to various extents.
First of all, at the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture at the Faculty of Forestry, University of Belgrade, where the professional courses started in 1960, for the first time in the former Yugoslavia . Graduate students have the title “graduate engineer of landscape architecture”. As it can be seen from the title and from the development of the Department at the Faculty of Forestry from the beginning of the Department the direction has been to develop a mixed curriculum for the professionals for both Landscape Architecture and Landscape Horticulture. Landscape Architecture and Horticulture are actually two professions, which are close in many segments, but they have been separated for a long time, even at the faculties where they used to be together. The focus of Landscape Architecture is landscape management, and the focus of Horticulture is plant cultivation (production and tending). Despite some advantages, the Department curriculum, in some periods caused some disadvantages to graduate engineers, who needed additional time in practice to reach the necessary level of skill in the desired field, because of the concept of a too wide fundamental undergraduate education.
In 1998 at the University of Novi Sad , the Department of Architecture was formed at the Technical Faculty. According to the curriculum of this Department, the course of “Landscape Architecture” is studied in the fifth year (the ninth semester).
Taking into account the significance of landscape approach in space management, the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade has recently included the landscape architecture aspect in some of the courses of study “Urban functions – recreation” and “Urban technique and composition”.
In the scope of the Department for Environmental Planning at the Faculty of Geography in Belgrade , there as a course of “Landscape Management”, a course with an explicit landscape-ecological approach, similar to the course of Landscape Planning and Management represented at any school of landscape architecture.