To the amateur gardener, it might seem that award-winning garden designer Matt Keightley’s latest project could potentially do him out of a job.
The man who has created gardens for figures including Prince Harry has co-founded Spacelift, an AI-assisted garden design platform which launched at the recent RHS Chelsea Flower Show, to help DIY-ers map out and design their garden on their phone.
The homeowner can upload a picture of their garden or scan the space they want to utilise – typically walking around the garden, marking boundaries on their phone – and choose from a number of styles, from Cotswolds Chic and Classic Contemporary to Modern Luxe and Scandinavian.
The app will generate expert-led AI-assisted designs tailored to their layout, lifestyle and environment, provide to-scale plans, including planting schemes, materials and spatial layouts and access “shop-the-look” functionality.
For those who shun AI when it comes to garden design, Keightley believes that in the right hands it could be an asset and attract a broader market.
“I’ve been a designer for 25 years – I started when I was 15 – and I like the idea that I could use that knowledge to help a bigger market, people who can’t necessarily afford or consider approaching a design studio.”
Keightley, who recently created three different gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show – a compact urban terrace, a restorative rural retreat and a nature-led woodland garden – to demonstrate the app’s ability, started the project a year ago.
One of the Spacelift gardens at RHS Chelsea Flower Show
“Gardens are quite scary if you don’t know what you’re looking for, or looking at, not knowing which is the right plant for the right place, how to plan the space into different zones, and the app does exactly that. We’re targeting DIY market lower-level budgets.”
To test soil, the user taps in their address and geographically the app will recognise the average soil type in that area. It also picks up aspect – sun, shade, semi-shade etc – selecting a list of plants which are viable in that space, he explains.
Importantly, the information generated is based on Keightley’s own design principles, including border types, layered planting and even best-placed garden furniture.
“It retrieves information from my design rules, my design thinking and before it generates anything it has a body of set parameters around what the design should be for each of the styles.
“So, for Cottage Garden, for example, I would be looking at big deep beds, layered planting, softer edges, working with the senses and thinking about which plants could be used to increase biodiversity and bring wildlife in.”
The app also separates the garden into zones, running the user through a series of preferences like a potting shed or bistro set. It will plan seating positions depending on where the sun tracks. Further inclusions of management and maintenance of the space are to come, incorporating details as to how much time the individual has for garden upkeep.
As yet there’s no helpline but there is a link to tradespeople in the local area and Keightley hopes to continue developing a network of trusted Spacelift contractors.
He says that sustainability is woven into the design thinking.
Garden designer Matt Keightley
“Irrigation would be recommended but only as a temporary measure. We want to get to the point where the planting selection is so strong that irrigation would only be an establishment method.”
With hard landscaping, they would examine how, for instance, the surface water is drained into the planting beds by maybe not having fully grouted joints, but open joints and gravel so that any surface water can seep back into the garden.
The app, which you can download for a free quick match, is available on subscription at £9.99 a month for a more detailed garden plan, with the option of an in-app project pack, at a one-off cost of £89.99, containing the visuals, lighting shots and other detailed information. So is Keightley doing himself out of a job?
“No, I’m not. First and foremost, we’re targeting DIY and not necessarily the existing market. There’s a huge amount of the general public who have gardens who don’t know what to do with them and they can’t afford design advice or help.
“Whilst I understand the argument that it might encroach on some designers, I think we need to be open-minded as an industry and understand that AI’s not going anywhere and the more people lean into it and use it to make their own designer practices more efficient, the better the industry could be.”
But what about his clients, the people who are better off but can see there’s a saving to be made by doing it themselves?
“It’s just an evolution of tech and resource,” he shrugs. “Until Pinterest came along we would sit down with clients, have a conversation, understand their brief and their aspirations – that would be it.
“These days the first contact is a link to their Pinterest board, images that they have curated or collected and that’s the starting point.”
He believes that keen gardeners won’t necessarily benefit from it that much because they already know their spaces and their plants.
“What it will do is increase the number of gardeners we have in the country, because access to good information based on expert knowledge is going to be available at their fingertips.”
So what’s the future for AI gardens?
Smart sensors which monitor things like moisture content and quality of the soil, air quality, lighting schemes and auto irrigation will become a matter of course in smart homes of the future, Keightley predicts.
“It’s not a massive leap to imagine people in their homes saying, ‘OK, Google or Alexa, what does my garden need this weekend?’ and it will link you to the shop and you’ll be able to get the bag of peat-free compost you need. It’ll be quick because people are lacking in patience these days.”
But he admits there are pros and cons to technological progress.
“You start talking about tech in the garden and asking Alexa for it and it sucks the soul out of what gardening should be, which is getting your hands dirty, getting out there, enjoying it and figuring it out if something doesn’t work.”
However, the industry does need to be more open to AI, he continues.
“We need to learn how we can use it as an industry. I understand the criticism around AI but if we leave it to its own devices someone’s going to get hold of it who doesn’t have garden experience and knowledge – and that’s when it becomes a real problem, if people are creating gardens that aren’t viable, aren’t sustainable and have no longevity.
“This is my attempt to get a bit of a harness on it, understand how we can use it and what we can do.
“I don’t think it will ever take over human intervention, both in the design studio from a creative standpoint, but also in building and planting gardens.”
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