The designer

Every plan begins in a real garden.

For as long as I can remember, plants have been my refuge. My father was an agronomist, and my mother loves plants perhaps even more than he did. I grew up around gardens, books, seeds, cuttings, and the quiet belief that plants can make a place feel alive.

A garden, to me, is not decoration. It is a community of plants that live together, breathe together, change with the seasons, and slowly become a landscape. When it works, it softens us too. It makes us more attentive, more patient, and maybe better human beings.

I'm Paola — an artist, children's book illustrator, and landscape designer working from the sierras of Córdoba, Argentina. For eighteen years I drew children, animals, and small imaginary worlds for picture books and nurseries. Over time, I began to feel that I wasn't moving away from art, but returning to its roots — recreating it in something living.

These plans are not generated by an algorithm. Each one begins with a real garden problem: a dark corner, a dry slope, a front bed that feels bare, a shady place where nothing seems to grow. I solve each design plant by plant — thinking about light, soil, rhythm, texture, and how the garden will feel as it matures. Then I draw it by hand, with the same care I would bring to a client project.

What you download is the same kind of document I would hand to a client: a planting plan, plant key, quantities, spacing, notes, and substitutions to help the design work in your own zone.

The garden images here are created with AI — not to replace design thinking, but as a visual tool to show the feeling and atmosphere behind each plan. Without it, it would be much harder to share the landscape I see in my mind: the light, the layers, the possible life of a border once the plants begin to grow together. The design itself — the plant communities, the spacing, the seasonal thinking — is entirely my own.

My hope is that these plans help you create gardens that feel natural, generous, and alive — gardens that belong to their place, and maybe help you feel that you belong there too.

Paola