One Day with Alfonso Pérez-Ventana

ONE DAY WITH | MASTERS & MUSES | WORLD OF CABANA

Alfonso Pérez-Ventana’s Madrid apartment feels surprisingly detached from the rhythm of the city below. Mature trees rise outside the windows, plants spill across a small terrace, and indoors and outdoors blur. It is an apt setting for the landscape designer, whose work is defined by observation, patience and an instinctive understanding of place. In conversation with Alessandro Laraspata, Pérez-Ventana reflects on the landscapes that shaped his childhood, the lessons he learned at Madrid’s Royal Botanical Garden and why the best things in life are rarely finished. 

BY ALESSANDRO LARASPATA | MASTERS & MUSES | 18 SEPTEMBER 2026

I wake up every morning at 7.15am. The first thing I notice is the blackbirds singing in the linden tree outside my window, occasionally interrupted by the city cleaning truck and its infernal leaf blowers.

Early morning is my favorite moment of the day. The light is softer, the air cooler and everything seems to be just beginning. It is also when I notice the smallest details most clearly: birdsong, an opening flower or the subtle changes that have taken place overnight. Summer evenings, however, have a magic of their own, when the heat begins to fade and the scents of a Mediterranean garden become much more pronounced.

I live right in the centre of Madrid. But I’m fortunate that my apartment looks out onto the treetops lining the street. Over the years I’ve filled my small terrace with plants, and with the doors open the boundary between inside and outside almost disappears. Sometimes it feels less like sitting in a city apartment than on a veranda, though perhaps that’s just my imagination.

I don’t have a garden of my own in my daily life. So, I try to compensate by surrounding myself with plants. Between the parks and gardens of Madrid, my travels and the projects I work on, I remain constantly connected to the landscape. During holidays I return to my family’s garden, which, although modest, reconnects me with what remains my greatest passion beyond my profession.

Most days are spent visiting gardens. Some are only beginning to take shape, while others have already matured over many years. Returning to them is a constant reminder that a garden is never truly still. It changes almost imperceptibly, revealing something new every time I visit.

One of the first things I notice in any landscape is the way light interacts with texture. It may sound obvious, but I never cease to be amazed by light’s ability to transform our perception of a place. The very same garden can feel completely different from one hour to the next simply because the light has changed.

Working with plants changes the way you experience time. Seasonality becomes part of everyday life, and even the smallest shifts in the landscape become meaningful. The moment I look forward to most comes towards the end of winter, when the first buds begin to swell and a slight change in the quality of the light quietly announces that spring has already begun.

I’ve always been an observant person. I think it’s something every gardener learns sooner or later. Once you develop a genuine interest in plants, you begin to realise that the smallest details often tell you far more than the grandest view.

I grew up in Moguer. It's a whitewashed town in the province of Huelva, close to Doñana National Park in the far southwest of Spain. Looking back, I realise my earliest memories are tied far more to landscapes than to gardens. I remember stone pine forests, dunes and vast Atlantic beaches, but above all I remember the scents: mastic, rockroses, lavender, broom and pine resin. Those Mediterranean landscapes are still the place I instinctively return to whenever I think of home.

I never imagined this would become my profession. As a child, I was fascinated by plants and the natural world, but it was a rather late vocation, perhaps something that had always been there and only surfaced when it became impossible to ignore.

Two people shaped the way I look at landscapes more than anyone else. My mother taught me to appreciate plants from an early age, especially the small, traditional plants of everyday domestic life. My uncle, Rafael, a forestry engineer, introduced me to the countryside and taught me to observe it more carefully, to understand that every landscape has its own character and its own logic.

That way of looking became even more deeply rooted during my training at Madrid’s Royal Botanical Garden. What fascinated me most was discovering that behind every beautiful garden lies science. But the most important lesson had little to do with botany itself. It was understanding that a garden is never truly finished. No matter how refined or established it may seem, it always requires attention, knowledge and ongoing care. It is an idea that has stayed with me and continues to shape the way I approach projects.

When I begin designing a garden, I always start with the place itself. Its character, its climate and its surroundings establish the rules long before any planting begins. Part of my role is helping clients understand that the landscape already contains many of the answers. The most successful gardens are those that belong naturally to their setting rather than imposing themselves upon it.

Perhaps that is why I am most drawn to domestic gardens. Wild landscapes, historic gardens and designed landscapes all interest me for different reasons, but private gardens often possess something that cannot be planned. They reflect the lives, tastes and personalities of the people who care for them. Like Umberto Pasti writes in Gardens: The True Ones and the Others, I am not necessarily interested in the most spectacular, but in those that emerge from a genuine relationship between people, plants and place.

Sometimes a modest garden, built slowly over many years, is far more moving than one created to impress. For me, the same is true of a house. Whether indoors or outdoors, I am always more interested in spaces that feel lived in and authentic than in those that appear perfectly composed. The objects we keep, the plants we grow and the traces we leave behind gradually become part of a place’s identity, giving it a character that cannot be designed from scratch.

The last object I brought home was a fragment of an old marble washbasin. I found it while walking in La Cerdanya, in Catalonia. At first I wasn’t sure whether I should take it. I covered it with leaves and left it there, but the following day I went back for it. It eventually travelled all the way to Madrid inside my suitcase. I’ve always been fascinated by stone, especially when it bears the traces of time and use.

If I could change one thing about my apartment... I wouldn’t add a greenhouse or a rooftop garden. I would choose a courtyard. Perhaps because of my Andalusian roots, I’ve always been drawn to the relationship between the house and the patio in southern Spain. I love homes organised around a central courtyard, where light, greenery and coolness become part of everyday life.

What transforms a beautiful garden into a memorable one is difficult to define. Beauty can be planned to a certain extent, but some of the qualities that stay with us emerge slowly and cannot always be anticipated. I don’t think gardens have to choose between being calming or surprising. The most memorable ones do both. They offer a sense of refuge while still retaining the ability to surprise you, even after years.

Perhaps that’s also why I believe every successful garden needs a sense of place. Whether it’s a large country estate or a small urban terrace matters far less than its ability to belong naturally to its surroundings and to the people who inhabit it. When that balance exists, a garden begins to feel inevitable, as though it could never have existed anywhere else.

Home, for me, is not simply a physical place. It is a landscape. The scent that takes me back is that of a Mediterranean summer intensified by the heat: oleander blossom, sun-bleached grasses at the end of August, warm pine resin and the faint presence of the nearby sea. Those fragrances instantly transport me to the landscapes of my childhood in Andalusia and to a place that, in many ways, still feels like home. 

Perhaps that is what I search for in every garden I visit or design. Not perfection, but the quiet feeling that a place has grown naturally from its landscape, carrying with it the memories of the people who have cared for it over time.