Well IMO most design software is at best a huge learning curve to use it properly and 3 d plans are not expensive compared to buying the software. I guess if this is a just apersonal cahllenge then you need to explore all the options for software and then spend the time to learn how to use it.

Hi Patricia I am not drawing the plans. I am going to be looking at 2D plans and trying to visualize which one I like better.
So a book that had the 2D plans on the left and finished pictures on the right would be helpful in retraining my brain to picture what the 2D plan would turn into.

You are hoping you will find the same exact plan drawn by a service provider for your property reproduced with additional views in a published reference elsewhere?

No I have someone who is drawing plans for me specifically. I want to be able to read them correctly.

Ask them what kind of presentation they can come up with that you will be able to understand. Maybe after seeing the usual flat view, ask them for help in interpreting it. Because you might find that after you discuss this rendering with them you will "get" what is being shown more fully than you are thinking you will now.

Ok ... so no one knows of a side by side plan and photo book? I can see YouTube videos of the garden plan and it’s installation, but the video does not pause on a high resolution copy of the plan so it is hard to study it and the finished product side by side. I could screen shot it and make my own I guess.

Our landscape architect provided great drawings and walked us through the details

Yep - presumably you will be able to get the same level of service.

Here are a few photos for reference- before our landscape update, the plan, and then this December after our furniture arrived for the new patio. I’m outside Boston so the plants are dormant (we normally leave the seed heads and stems for the winter but since we moved the plants around in September and October they were cut for root preservation).

Cutting tops of woody plants doesn't help their roots - in fact the opposite. Because energy stored in tops over the winter is used to supply energy for root growth in spring. And vice versa - a shrub is an integrated system, just as our own bodies are. With the temporary reduction in overall size increase produced by cutting back either resulting in routine pruning of both tops and roots being used by bonsai practitioners to keep their subjects quite dwarfed.

I'm having a hard time picturing what such a resource would look like to be usable across the wide variety of landscapes that exist. I agree with the above, see what your designer can do to help. If it's strictly picturing how things look relative to each other in elevation view, sometimes even a quick sketch can help.

I’ve starting looking at the plans and finished product and it’s been quite helpful actually. Ex. Why are these rocks here in the plan? Look at picture, oh it’s to add some height and some symmetry when you look at it, repeat the pattern from the smaller rocks around the fire pit, etc. I’m starting to grok it.