Planting design presents major challenges in the profession’s adoption of digital innovations. Barriers include the number and complexity of processes entailed in planting design, including a range of interdependencies in living systems (environmental and cultural), consideration of growth factors and project delivery constraints (from design through to establishment and management) and everevolving digital technologies (data and 3D parametric modeling). The paper explores findings from a series of courses teaching advanced digital techniques for planting design to landscape architecture students during the Australian academic years 2022-2023, and asks how the role of digital technologies presents an opportunity to improve the teaching approach and professional practice of planting design in landscape architecture. This is achieved in a four-part methodology developed over three design studio-type courses at graduate and post-graduate levels of a case study site in Melbourne. First, rigour of species selection is enhanced in a site-specific response based on analysis of plant traits data and an enriched context framework. This leads next to the development of a planting strategy based on a feedback loop that incorporates design, establishment, and management phases of the plant growth cycles and project stages. The third phase integrates informational and visual dimensions of planting by adopting various digital tools to develop, test and articulate a concept. Finally, the fourth phase refers to the workflow analysis and reflection of methods. Findings indicate student performance depended on willingness (attitude) and skill (ability) to adapt to new approaches and tools for planting design. The methodology and findings highlight the importance of ‘hybridising’ the disciplines of horticulture, landscape architecture and computational design to advance planting design in the prevailing digital realm of the built environments industry. A ‘hybrid’ approach bridges the variability in knowledge, methods, and skills in both pedagogy and in practice. The approach enables landscape architects to effectively adopt emerging digital technology tools and processes, in order to improve the overall performance of living systems in projects over a whole life cycle.