AI, "Stewardship" and where does this leave the garden designer/Landscape Architect?

AI and the Stewardship of Gardens

I wasn’t expecting to write this post. It arrived after a vivid dream , one that lingered long after waking , a few days after attending the recent Urban Greening Symposium at the Garden Museum.

Stewardship had been a recurring theme throughout the event. Quite rightly so. Across landscape practice, horticulture, and urban design, there is growing agreement that long-term stewardship is essential if we are serious about biodiversity, climate resilience, and meaningful public space.

All sectors, I feel, have always known stewardship , a posh word for care , is where most of our resources should go, but I feel the need to stop bullshitting ourselves and recognise that putting more money into care is now gaining momentum.

We talk increasingly about stewardship rather than installation; about care rather than completion. Our profession is slowly recognising that landscapes are not products but living systems, shaped over time through attention, maintenance, and adaptation.

That wider discussion deserves its own post.

But my dream introduced an unexpected question: where does artificial intelligence sit within this idea of stewardship?

The Dream

The dream began with something familiar.

I found myself walking into a garden project , one that, in reality, had been completed the previous June. Everything looked recognisable, yet slightly altered, as dreams tend to do.

I greeted the client and we exchanged the usual awkward British pleasantries.

Almost automatically, I slipped into professional mode.

“Do you need a concept design?” I asked.

“No, we’re good,” they replied, warmly but matter-of-factly.

That seemed perfectly reasonable. I wasn’t there to push. So the conversation moved on.

“Perhaps you’ll need a planting plan?”

“That’s all taken care of, thank you.”

The exchange continued like this for some time. Each offer — ideas, drawings, advice, refinement — was gently declined. Not out of dissatisfaction, but because everything had already been done.

Eventually the reason became clear.

The client had AI producing it all.

Design concepts. Planting plans. Layout decisions. Seasonal adjustments. Every professional service Teasels might normally provide had been generated instantly, efficiently, and apparently satisfactorily.

And in the logic of the dream, this felt entirely normal.

So I asked the obvious question.

“What do you need from me?”

The client smiled and pointed towards an intricate piece of paving within the garden.

“We want you on site,” they said. “Help us play with this paving. Let’s have fun doing it.”

Again, at this point — as dreams do , the voice of Ian Dury came into my head and said… “oi… oi”.

All the drawings had been produced. The concepts resolved. The planting planned. Every deliverable that might traditionally define a landscape designer’s role had already been generated elsewhere.

But what remained could not be downloaded or automated , something that wasn’t a prompt or mouse click away.

They wanted presence. They wanted emotion. They wanted feeling.

They wanted experimentation. Adjustment. Someone to stand in the space with them, with the landscape, to respond to light, material, proportion, and instinct in real time. They wanted human connection… no shit, you might be saying to yourself.

To move a stone slightly to the left and then back again, crack a few jokes, share our mutual love of Ian Dury perhaps… To test ideas not on a screen, but underfoot. To enjoy the process together.

And in the dream, this felt entirely logical.

I should say clearly: I’m not an AI doom-and-gloom merchant.

The idea that artificial intelligence will suddenly destroy professions and leave nobody with work feels like hot air , a lot of BS , often amplified either by those with a vested interest in selling AI, or by a tendency towards technological catastrophising. Neither position feels especially helpful to a grown-up discourse.

I’m old and ugly enough to have seen this type of hot air , this bubble , inflate and pop before.

What seems far more likely is something quieter and more incremental… something less black and white than some people seem to think.

AI will increasingly undertake many of the tasks we currently carry out — or, more accurately, it will dramatically reduce the time required to complete them. And when the time required to deliver a service reduces, the cost of that service inevitably follows. That’s market forces at work.

We have already seen this happen. Visualisations and renders, once specialist and expensive outputs, have steadily become democratised over the past decade.

What was once a premium offering is now often expected as standard. As the technology improves, becomes faster, more realistic, and almost instantaneous, the additional monetary value we once attached to these services diminishes.

Design production, documentation, iteration, and visual testing are all moving in this direction.

Which raises an uncomfortable but necessary trajectory: technology reduces the need for certain forms of professional labour. Not entirely, but enough to reshape where value sits.

So Where Does the Designer’s Value Move?

It seems apparent to me that the shift moves towards what technology cannot replicate: in-person, on-site.

People on site, discussions around a muddy piece of A3 plan.

Discussion and tutoring around the HMMP (Habitat Monitoring and Management Plan), this being both ways.

AI can’t locate where that ant hill is in the meadow. After some clearance of bramble, it reveals a few self-sown hawthorn, elder… well, let’s discuss and work. Let’s discuss the best way forward. Let’s discuss how what we have found has evolved over the last few months.

The gardener has noticed that willow tits or yellowhammer are finding that part of the landscape favourable for them. Why is that? Let’s discuss and observe — tutoring and observing together — with all this time being paid for on site.

Less clock-watching, more on-site mentoring. Priceless learning for both the “designer” (whatever that means) and the gardener, and the garden landscape that evolves.

In that future, practical knowledge becomes increasingly important.

A garden designer / landscape architect who has gardened — or currently gardens. Real-world plant knowledge seems to me to be ever more important.

The practitioner who understands their materials and the on-site practicalities of how spaces are built in real life — maintenance, growth, and failure through lived experience.

Those individuals may hold an advantage over designers whose experience exists primarily within drawings and specifications. Because stewardship is not theoretical; it is embodied knowledge.

Let me know what you think. That last paragraph was consciously added to create response, by the way — however I do feel there is some truth within the statement.

In reality, in person, out of the office and on site, being paid to support teams in the long-term care of space feels like a probable destination — and better for the landscape architect or garden designer as well.

So will there be a time where the business model of the garden designer / landscape architect changes somewhat, and income comes over the long term — not just upfront during Stages 2, 3 and 4?

The garden designer / landscape architect receives most of their income on a retainer for the garden.

Designers paid on a retainer , well, there’s a thought.

But again, where does our real value sit, and how do we get paid a liveable income?

I said I’m not an absolutist, and the need for the computer will not disappear. We will still need contracts, drawings, specifications, and coordination.

But machine learning, ever larger data sets, and large language models will make much of that work faster, more streamlined, and inevitably less profitable as a standalone service.

For many tasks, is it the uncomfortable truth that AI could do the job better than us?

And, honestly, I hope that happens.

The transition will be uncomfortable.

I will find it uncomfortable… who really likes change?

But if it moves us towards supporting the chance of achieving long-term success of landscapes , which is a challenge in itself anyway , rather than simply their delivery, then it will ultimately strengthen both the designer’s work and the places we help create.

Our projects function and look wonderful and are more likely to bring happiness and satisfaction to the people that work in them and the people that visit them and enjoy the space , in the long term, not just for the first 18 months or until we get the project professionally photographed… whichever comes first

I’m not going to parrot John Little, though to paraphrase him:

“As an industry, we have a long history of funding things rather than funding people. We invest in materials and capital works, yet often struggle to resource the human care required afterwards — the stewardship that allows landscapes to mature and thrive.”

Perhaps AI quietly pushes us toward correcting that imbalance.

AI will not take our jobs; it will change them.

I hope it supports a landscape economy where value lies in people rather than outputs — outcomes.

A landscape economy where the money pays for connection, collaboration, shared learning, and shared making.

The designer’s value , and what we ultimately invoice for , may in the future be more weighted towards observing, adjusting, teaching, mentoring, and occasionally just playing with materials and plants.

Being paid for this sounds far-fetched at the moment, but AI may move us in this direction.



Or AI could do all the work for us and the clients / industry don’t pay for the care and stewardship, and we are left with AI slop and an even worse, soulless landscape… but I’m an optimist, so I don’t want to envision that future to be honest… however you never know.

Perhaps that was the real message hidden inside the dream: when technology takes care of production, what remains , and what matters most , is human presence, human connection, with less isolation.

If your'e wondering, the irony of Chatgbt proof reading this article isn't lost on me !!!