About me

Hi, I hope you enjoy the blog. My name is Catarina Gonçalves, I’m a Garden Designer, from Portugal currently living in Ericeira.

I graduated from Greenwich University in 2006, I love everything to do with design, gardens, and plants. And of course, outdoor living, decoration, and furniture are elements I enjoy a lot when working with clients.

Since 2007 I’m the chief editor of a Portuguese magazine Tudo Sobre Jardins, a landscape architecture and garden design focus edition that I’m very proud of. If you are curious follow the link (it’s mainly in Portuguese but we do have a digital bilingual edition). Every year I go to RHS Chelsea Flower Show, it’s the highlight of the season.

Since 2017 I wanted to create a blog or a website so I could share my experiences not only as a garden designer but mainly how I developed my projects, and how I create my renderings and animations. So in 2018, I started the Garden Design Tools blog. In every profession, we are always working to improve our self and my main objective is to show what I learn in these more than 10 years. My search for the best programs and software to use in my projects had a lot to do with the fact that I’m not very good at drawing. And they didn’t represent the quality that I wanted to show my clients. After all these years I think I found a very good solution not only in terms of the finished images but in terms of speed as well.

I will talk about other things as well like apps I use so if you have any suggestions or questions don’t hesitate to send me an email.