I Used AI to Re-Imagine My Front Yard

Since moving from an apartment to a house several years ago, I’ve tried my hand at gardening. I’ve planted little hydrangeas along a pathway in the backyard that after a couple of summers are really flourishing. I’ve added lavender, roses, and other pollinators, too, in an effort to welcome birds and insects to my little patch of land. It’s satisfying to see the perennials I’ve planted come back each year. But my planting is haphazard at best, adhering to the "eyeball it" method, and I’ve certainly made a lot of mistakes planting things that inevitably die or need to move elsewhere. At best I’m a mediocre gardener who’s learning little by little. And I have no delusions that I’m any kind of designer. 

For the inside of my home, I enlisted the help of an interior designer. But for the landscaping and outdoor spaces, I'm more willing to go the DIY route. For some reason, moving dirt around, buying plants, and trying to transform it into the pie-in-the-sky version of itself is a little less intimidating. It’s also why I wanted to give Yardzen’s YardAI a try—an AI-powered tool that serves up inspiration in image form, specifically built to create landscaping designs for the front yard.

"[YardAI] is trained on 50,000 fully custom landscape designs that we have created over the past few years for clients across the country," says Yardzen CEO Allison Messner. "Yardzen is uniquely suited to do this. It’s not like any other interior design tool."

Curious to know what your yard would look like with a total overhaul? Snap a photo, upload it to YardAI, and then pick your design poison: the tool lets you choose up to four styles (options include Cottage, Contemporary, Mediterranean, Rustic, Southwestern, Traditional, Modern Boho, or "choose for me") and it will generate options in each style. Don’t like any of them? No problem. You can ask it to generate new results.

"It could be immensely useful for somebody who doesn't have interest in or appetite for buying a custom landscape design package from Yardzen and going through that process," Messner says. "They just want to be inspired."

Trying it out 

I went through a few rounds of images with photos of my front yard. I particularly liked the Cottage style image it served up, which suggested I add more flowers, expand the beds, and update the bluestone sidewalks to something else—something I’d actually love to do at some point when budget allows. There were other images that incorporated a house next door that doesn’t exist—along with fictional trees that looked to be 100 years-old—that were completely unrealistic. But that’s to be expected with tools like these, especially at this stage.

Like any other AI tool, the more times you use YardAI (and the more people who use it and give it feedback), the better it will get. And as is to be expected, some of the images it generates will give your yard a computer-y quality. On my first go-round with the tool, I uploaded a photo that included my son running through the picture. I wanted to see what it would do with a human. In some of the results, he’d been edited out. Another suggested a structural change to the side of my house. In another, he’d been hilariously edited to look like an adult suit-wearing Sim.