tech and the garden

Lately I have worked with some tech-savvy clients. It was a fair trade. I bring an extensive knowledge of plants and landscape material to the table, and the client was bringing a whole different skillset: tech. Put them all together and you come up with a sometimes-stunning and totally unique way of doing landscape design.

Here is a job we did in Montclair. The client made their own design, using their favorite video game, Minecraft.

Turned out pretty good:

Here is another design that the client came up with using what he called AI. First he went around his neighborhood and photographed plants and landscapes he liked. Then I attached names to each plant. Then he googled each plant. Then I narrowed it down to about 8 plants that we would plant in clusters. Then he plugged the plant names and a photo of his front yard into the computer which produced some pretty solid designs, one of which we enacted.

For me, designing a garden is best done in the garden, plants in hand. But for many people, the computer is the go-to. They want to see it on the screen first. For these clients, making their own design really hooked them on the process as well. I still prefer colored pencils and a sketchpad, but I'm learning to appreciate the computer as a useful gardening tool as well.