By Victoria Turk
Since ChatGPT first launched at the end of 2022, AI has become embedded in many aspects of our lives, from social media to shopping. Now, even gardening is being transformed — and you might be pleasantly surprised at just how useful it turns out to be.
One such vision of AI-enabled horticulture will be on display at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Garden designer Tom Massey and architect Je Ahn will helm the Avanade “Intelligent” Garden, which uses sensors and AI to track plant welfare. Based on the theme of an urban forest, the garden will contain tree species with various horticultural requirements. Sensors measure characteristics such as soil moisture, the movement of sap in tree trunks, and the amount of light filtering through canopies — “things that a human gardener wouldn’t be able to see in real time,” says Massey.
AI will help gardeners make sense of this data via a text interface similar to a chatbot, which visitors will be able to see on screens inside a mycelium-covered pavilion. “You’ll be able to have a conversation with the tree and say, ‘What do you need?’ or ‘How are you feeling?’ ” says Massey. “And the tree will respond.”
The idea is that this kind of data gathering and feedback makes for more efficient allocation of increasingly precious resources such as water. It should also improve plant resilience; one in 10 urban trees dies within a year of planting, says Ahn, and by the time you notice wilting branches and crispy leaves it may be too late. Massey hopes data from the show garden could feed into an app that home gardeners would use to track the health of their own plants. Users could manually input data, such as when they last watered a plant, to keep tabs on its condition.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the garden has met with backlash before any plants have taken root. Critics balk at the idea of tech invading nature and question the overall environmental benefit, pointing to the vast amounts of energy and water needed to power AI data centres. Massey is quick to point out that the garden’s AI system is based on a small language model, trained on a focused data set, taking fewer resources than the large language models powering tools such as ChatGPT.
While some gardeners may give a green thumbs down to wiring up their precious plants, AI is set to become a horticultural companion without the need for such hardware. The RHS recently embarked on its Plants for Purpose project, which uses machine learning to categorise 400,000 plants based on specific environmental benefits — sequestering carbon, for example, or capturing water to help prevent flooding. RHS Wisley in Surrey is one garden that’s part of the project, with its herbarium collection of dried plant specimens used as data to feed into the system. Here, smart systems automatically adjust environmental conditions for plant trials and to preserve historic collections.
All of which could be essential if we’re to help mitigate the changing climate and environmental challenges we face, as Alistair Griffiths, RHS director of science, points out. Instead of thinking along the lines of the old gardening maxim “right plant, right place”, he says, we now need to be considering “right plant, for right place, for right purpose”.
Other AI-powered tools already exist to help home gardeners understand more about their plots. Apps such as Pl@ntNet identify plants from a photo, and Picture Insect does the same for bugs. Merlin Bird ID identifies birds from their calls.
But what about going a step further? Automated irrigation systems and robot lawnmowers are already available. RHS Garden Rosemoor in North Devon trialled a robot lawnmower last year in their orchard where traditional mowing was difficult due to the height of the trees. It proved a success and they’re looking to expand its use into other areas. Planting and weeding systems are also in use in commercial growing environments. Could AI complete the loop, not only tracking plant conditions but actively addressing them — resulting in a garden that looks after itself?
The Avanade show garden has purposely steered clear of this. “We don’t want to in any way imply that people or gardeners should be replaced,” says Massey. Physical robots are also somewhat limited in the tasks they can do, at present. Turning a sprinkler on and off is one thing, but a tree-pruning drone may be some way off. Griffiths is sceptical that tech could ever replace the delicate touch of human hands on plants and soil; he sees AI more as a coach or a copilot.
In any case, as Ahn rightly points out: “Most of us who garden, we actually quite like to do the gardening.”
Photography: Tom Massey Studio; RHS
