Heidi has been making things, growing things, rearranging things, and generally wondering “what if we did it this way instead?” for as long as she can remember.

 

A lifelong artist and grower, she founded Zaboka Design in 2024, finally making the leap from doing creative projects as a side hustle to putting her full-time energy into creating spaces and experiences that don't take themselves too seriously.

 

For more than 20 years, Heidi has been getting her hands dirty as a horticulturist, gardener, garden designer, and educator in South Florida. She's grown vegetables, designed gardens, started plants from seed, built compost piles, taught workshops, trained volunteers, chased garden pests, and learned the hard way which plants really want to live in Miami—and which ones we should give up on trying to grow.

​

But gardens are only part of the story.

​

Heidi is happiest when something has been transformed. A neglected garden becomes lush and productive. A room suddenly has color and personality. A table becomes a little bit theatrical. An ordinary piece of furniture gets painted until it has something to say.

​

She likes spaces with a pulse.

​

Her work lives somewhere between gardening, art, design, and a mild rebellion against the beige-and-boring. She loves plants, color, texture, unexpected combinations, and finding new uses for things that other people might have already written off.

​

At the heart of it all is a pretty simple idea: spaces should make you feel something.

​

And if that means putting a vegetable garden where someone thought there should be a lawn, painting an outlet to match the backsplash, or putting a ridiculous number of plants in a room—well, that's probably a good place to start.