The MLA program at ASU is designed to enable students to engage with the community in projects that focus on improving the ecological and social health of the urban environment. Emphasis is on sustainable outdoor environments. In the United States, most state registration boards require a degree from an accredited professional degree program as a prerequisite for licensure.

The graduate landscape architecture program projects can include large-scale work encompassing urban design, landscape reclamation, open space preservation planning and landscape ecological design, and projects at the more intimate scale of a neighborhood park or residential backyard. Emerging areas of focus include biotechnical design, construction of greenways, green roofs, living walls, urban agriculture as well as the design of healing environments.

This program is for applicants who have earned a undergraduate or graduate degree in architecture, urban design, landscape design, planning, urban design, or a related design field. The "pathway" is a set of courses that must be taken prior to starting the regular track of the MLA program and lasts one semester.

As an accredited Master of Landscape Architecture degree program, the curriculum is intended to prepare students for landscape architecture professional practice and advanced study at the doctoral level. The Design School is committed to the merging of global and local contexts and concerns and, toward this end, graduate students in their final year go abroad for two weeks as part of their studio course. To date, students have traveled to Argentina, England, Ethiopia, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Rwanda, Spain and Turkey. The school also offers a number of summer study abroad programs in an effort to extend the student opportunities for global engagement. 

Since 2011, when the first class of students graduated with master's degrees in landscape architecture, ASU alumni have found employment with nationally recognized landscape architects, in multinational firms and within public municipalities and agencies.