🤖🌳 Can AI design a landscape?

🤖🌳 Can AI design a landscape? Let’s put it to the test and see what it comes up with! #smithsgardentown #landscapedesign #AIexperiment #gardentok #plantlife

Is AI good enough to do landscape design yet? Let’s find out. We all know it’s going to happen at some point that you’ll be able to just put a picture of your house into AI and it will design a landscape for you. But are we there yet in early 2025? So, today we’re testing out Chat GPT40. That’s the $20 a month paid version of Chat GPT, but it’s not the highest tier of the Chat GPT, which I think is like $200 a month. I started off this experiment by taking a picture of a random home in a new housing development that has no landscaping. And I drew two green circles on it. Now, anytime you are using AI, you’ve got to have good prompts that are very specific and detailed. So, here’s what I told it. Can you make a landscape design for this North Texas home? I only want plants in the areas circled in green. The rest of the bare soil will be lawn. I want quite a few flowering perennials, but I also want evergreen foundational shrubs that will look nice in winter. All plants need to be well adapted for Texas or Texas native to Texas. We will have a drip system, but drought tolerant plants would be nice. The house is south facing and will get a lot of sun. Make an image to show what it will look like. And I came up with this image, which actually looks super nice. They did add an extra window to the house, which is a little bit weird. And they added plants out into the lawn space. So, it didn’t quite follow directions. You added plants all the way across the lawn. I only want plants in the green circle there is. So, it tried again and once again it added plants in the lawn. I guess it just wants more plants in there or doesn’t follow directions really well. So, then I said, “That’s great. Now, give me a list of all of those plants and the quantities that are in the design.” So, I gave us dwarf yopon holly, dwarf wax, myrtle, purple cone flour, autumn sage, blackfoot daisy, mely blue sage, and zexminia, and golf muyrass. So, then it made a nice printable list for me with the quantities and descriptions. And then it said, “Let me know if you would like spacing guidelines or a label diagram for planting.” To which I said, “A labeled diagram would be great.” And then it gave me this image, which was actually pretty cool, though it does appear to just be the right half of this landscape design. So, are we there yet? Can the landscape designers be replaced by AI? I would say no. At least not yet. But this is a really great tool that can get you started in the right direction on how to landscape your home. In my opinion, the plant list was the most valuable part of this experiment. Being able to upload a picture of your house and describe where you are and what you want and get a custom list of plants for your area is really, really cool. Where it’s lacking is the nitty-gritty details and showing you how to space everything out and where exactly to plant it in your bed. But if you were to take this information into your local garden center and talk to the experienced staff there, then this would be a really great way for you to have some good ideas and for them to expound on it and help you with those details so you know exactly where to plant the plants at your house. So yeah, don’t be scared of AI. Instead, use it as a valuable tool for brainstorming and expanding your knowledge of what plants are going to work in your area and pair it with your local experts at your local garden Here.