Meet Nora | Garden Designer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Nora and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Nora, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
The pursuit of creative freedom was at the heart of starting my garden design business. My practice is personal, sensory, and intuitive and I wanted to share it directly with clients. My goal is that, after working with me, clients feel a deeper sense of stewardship over their land. I hope their gardens become therapeutic refuges, places where they can ground themselves and connect with the nature.

I often invite clients to join me in fine gardening so they can learn how to care for their spaces firsthand. I want them to feel empowered in their role as stewards and be able to shape their gardens based on how they want to use and experience their space, rather than fussing over strict rules or perfection.

Residential landscapes, while often overlooked as ecological hotspots, collectively make up a vast portion of our environment and often interface with the public. When designed with care and intention, these spaces have the power to improve our personal well-being, support biodiversity, and contribute meaningfully to the health of our broader ecological community. My work is grounded in the belief that thoughtful changes on this small scale can have a great impact multiplied across neighborhoods.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Being super green in my career, one of the first things I realized was that I was going to make mistakes, and often. The biggest lesson so far has been learning to anticipate those mistakes and understand how to navigate them without letting them derail my practice. I had to shift my mindset quickly. Instead of fearing mistakes, I’ve learned to see them as essential learning opportunities.

Reflection and documentation have become central to how I work. I have started to fall in love with photography and writing. I keep garden journals more regularly and my camera is among the tools in my gardening bag. Each garden yields a new moment to capture. Whether it be crows bathing in a dusty patch of earth or pollinators feeding on blooms. Over time, I’ve started to see this not just as a personal tool but as a practice I can share. I’m planning to publish some of these reflections on my website, not just to deepen my brand as a garden designer but to grow into my role as an educator. I want to create space to share my thoughts on design, books I’m reading, and observations I make in the field and in nature.

My practice is becoming more and more rooted in my ecological observations, not only in terms of environmental systems but also in how we experience nature emotionally and physically. I’m deeply interested in that intersection, and I want my work to invite others into that awareness.

My business endeavor has afforded me a chance to stay curious, remain flexible, and collaborate freely. I’m always looking for opportunities to connect with artists and other designers to create shared opportunities and support each other’s work. I see my generation (shoutout Gen Z!) embracing a more collective approach to entrepreneurship, especially as running a small business becomes increasingly challenging.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
My ideal day cruising Atlanta with friends starts off with a Saturday morning at the Freedom Farmer’s Market. I always make a beeline for Woodland Gardens and Diamond Hill Farm, two favorites from my university days in Athens. I can’t leave the farmer’s market without waiting in the Little Tart line for sourdough and a pastry to snack on. From there, I’d put my Atlanta Botanical Garden membership to good use, dragging a friend along for plant identification and a bit of unsolicited critique. Late summer is perfect for checking out the food forest on the Beltline, a short detour from the Bot Garden, so we could see if peaches or figs were available for snacking. I would then want to find our way to Cabbagetown to get a bite to eat at Jen Chan’s with friends. I love to host, so before long we would find ourselves gathering at home to cook up our farmer’s market haul.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are so many people I would love to shout out. First, I want to thank my family and friends for always supporting me in all of my endeavors. A big part of my inspiration to start a business as a woman came from the many female entrepreneurs I met while living in Chile. My friends Michi Astorga and Andrea Manuschevich showed me what successful creative pursuits can look like in their respective fields of eco-tourism and photography. Watching them, I was also able to anticipate some of the challenges that come with freelance work and entrepreneurship.

There’s a strong entrepreneurial spirit in Chile, and it energized me when I returned to the U.S. I jumped right into building my business, taking on clients little by little.

I’d be remiss not to mention the landscape and garden design mentors who gave me the skills, opportunities, and ongoing support to grow in my craft. Jim Moneyhun and Gareth Crosby mentored me for many years at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia. Shelley Canady was my first fine gardening client and taught me so much about estate maintenance and edible gardening. Kelley Oklesson at Groundsmith Collective offered fireside chats and encouragement at times when I really needed it.

Finally, I would also like to thank Marcia Weber and the folks at Gardens to Love for continued education as well as encouragement to break into entrepreneurship in Atlanta.

Website: https://noragellona.com

Instagram: noragellonagardens

Image Credits
Carrie Miller
Ash Daniel