‘I could do with a haircut’: First AI-powered garden will let chat to your flowers and soil

Intelligent gardens will know when they need watering

News By Christian Rowlands published 7 November 2024

• 'Intelligent garden' co-designed with Microsoft to go on show in 2025
• Sensors track garden health with AI model trained on the plant data
• Visitors can also ask the garden questions and get replies

AI could soon take the guesswork out of gardening and let you have conversational chats with your lawn and plants. By monitoring environmental factors and feeding them into a model trained on plant data, so-called 'intelligent gardens' could soon be able to tell you when to water, trim and or fertilize your patch.

That’s the promise of the Avanade ‘Intelligent’ Garden, which will appear at next year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show in the UK. Created by garden designer Tom Massey in collaboration with Microsoft, the showpiece plot will be embedded with an array of sensors which feed real-time information into an AI model.

Those sensors will track factors such as soil moisture, pH and nutrient levels, air quality, temperature and rainfall. This information alone would be beneficial to anyone tending a garden, but the benefit of the dynamic AI model is that it’s proactive in tracking conditions and predicting changes.

The designer Tom Massey told The Guardian that the garden will be interactive, too. For example, visitors could ask "how are you?" and “it could answer: I need a bit more water, I can do with a haircut, maybe”, he added.

In short, it can tell its horticultural keepers how it’s feeling and what it needs.

This will be in evidence at the UK's Chelsea Flower Show (from May 20 – 24, 2025), where visitors to the pavilion can interact with a digital version of the smart garden. It will ‘respond’ to visitor queries by drawing on live data, giving an immediate picture of its health.

Beyond the novelty factor, the idea here is not just to make the lives of gardeners easier. One of the primary motivations behind the installation is to promote the efficient use of resources. By understanding exactly what’s going on in the garden, its caretakers can give it just what it needs – and nothing more.

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