R function for manipulative field experiment design - Plant ecology

I am a plant ecologist and I would like to design a field manipulative experiment. To achieve a good degree of randomisation in the disposition of plants inside experimental plots, I would like to use R (with which I'm familiar) but I cannot seem to find a package flexible enough for my purpose, so I'm considering writing a formula but I don't know where to start. The picture is a schematisation of the design: in total there would be 6 plots, each containing 24 different plant species. In total I have 36 plant species, from which I would like to randomly sample 24 species per plot (with high variation between plots). Each species should be present in 4 out of the 6 plots but in different positions, twice along the border (in two of the warm colours) and twice in the core area (once per cold colour); in the picture I visually explain what I mean using 4 different species (A,B,C,D).

Could anyone suggest a way to do it or some insight to write the function? Thank you very much!!

Plot design