Back-breaking, Expensive Backyard Clean Up

After spending weeks of labour and money cleaning up areas of the garden that had been poorly planned by the previous owner of the house, I started thinking: there must be a better way. It must feel exciting at first to buy plants for a blank backyard, but a few years down the track, things can become huge, messy, and expensive to maintain. Hundreds or even thousands of dollars may need to be spent just to begin fixing the problem. Some plants even come back more aggressively after being trimmed. With very little expertise in landscaping or garden design, I eventually ran to AI for help...

Could AI Help?

What I did was feed a photo of the space into GPT and ask it to transform the garden — within a reasonable budget — into something tidy, hotel-like, but still warm and homely. What I got back was a very pleasant surprise.

What I didn’t expect was the emotional reaction it triggered: suddenly, I could actually picture this chic, functional outdoor space, and it felt achievable. It’s like what people say — “once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”

What If I Write an App from This Idea?!

With the sense of adventure, I've decided to write an app which uses this ChatGPT functionality. I can see so many uses of such ideas: not just landscaping, but also house renovations, room decors, shopping help, etc...

The simplest version of the tool will be: someone uploads a garden photo, describes the style or maintenance level they want, and receives both a visual concept and practical planting suggestions. This article is entry #0 — discovering the problem and realizing there may be a useful solution here. In the next entry, I’ll start experimenting with the OpenAI API tools and learning how to generate these visual transformations programmatically!