Claude and I make a great team: I constructed a prompt for a front-border planting scheme; Claude designed a layout and recommended a list of plants; I drove to the garden centre, purchased them, and arranged for a landscaper to plant them. I can recommend landscape design with Claude!

This is a quick update to an article I posted a few weeks back, which has since  become the most-read article on the site. In it, I described my experience of tackling some modest landscape design with Claude.

The project involved creating a design for a border in our front yard. Most garden centers or nurseries offer this service, but it is quite expensive. So, I thought I would try an alternative approach – asking a large language model to design it for me.

Landscape design with Claude

I drafted a detailed prompt, asking Claude, the Anthropic LLM, to help me design a planting scheme for a border which was bereft of any vegetation. In brief, I describe the border’s dimensions, its aspect, the types of plant I had in mind (low-growing, flowing shrubs etc.) and asked Claude to come up with a plan.

In no time, Claude conjured up a list of plants, the quantity of each I needed, a diagram of the proposed arrangement, and tips on planting them. One of the suggestions missed the mark (a pittosporum that would grow too tall), and some of the suggested varieties were not available locally. Nevertheless, on a scouting trip to a local nursery I could readily spot substitutions that would work just as well.

I am pleased to report that the border has now been planted.

The color palette is green (of course!), purple, yellow, and white. A few of the star performers are salvia, dwarf hemerocalis, mini-agapanthus, and a low-growing lavandula. I added some osteospermum in several colors to edge the border.

You can find the details of my original prompt in the earlier article. If you are considering sprucing up your front yard, I can recommend landscape design with Claude, and Armstrong Gardens as a great source of plants!