For the students, it is an opportunity to design a landscape in real-world conditions, accounting for a real client’s needs. For the developers, it’s a source of fresh ideas and it’s cheaper, too.

Real estate developers Ken Horn and Joel Breitkopf of Alchemy Properties are scheduled to sit on a panel of judges today for a design competition they organized in conjunction with Columbia University. The developers will sift through the renderings and models of 16 Columbia landscape design students for the backyard of their 11-story Lookout Hill condominium project in Brooklyn Heights.

As part of a semester-long studio class, the students built models and made renderings of their ideas for the garden behind the building. Their task was to provide Lookout Hill residents, who will be paying between $500,000 and $950,000 for a condo, a space for relaxation and an area for children to play.

“They went beyond what I expected,” Mr. Horn said.

The Columbia students, who are all enrolled in a yearlong landscape design master’s program, will be offered $2,000 for first place in the competition; second and third place winners get $1,000 and $500, respectively. With a $50,000 budget in mind, students aimed to convert a long, narrow space flanked on three sides by tall buildings into an area that, Mr. Horn said, had to serve two very different functions.

“It was great for us to interact with something real,” a landscape student, Rachel Williams, 39, said.

“I think these developers are interested in the kind of designs that students think about which are maybe more risky,” fellow classmate Barbara Batcheler said.

Many of the student’s submissions included water. Ms. Williams designed a wading pool, which she thought would be peaceful for adults and fun for children.

An instructor in the program, landscape architect Adrian Smith, estimated that there are around 400 registered landscape architects in the greater New York City area, and many more landscape designers. Landscape architects and designers figure into most development projects, he said.

“I like to say that a rule of thumb is that 10% of your architecture budget should go to your landscape budget,” Mr. Disponzio said. Landscape designers in New York usually charge an hourly rate of between $85 and $175 an hour. And there’s an extra financial incentive for Alchemy to use student designs.

“It’s probably a little less,” Mr. Smith said. “But it depends on whom you hire and what the scope of their work is.”