Can ChatGPT design a landscape? We gave it our test yard

We gave ChatGPT the photo above and the brief in the box: Raleigh, zone 8a, part sun under pines, cottage style, low maintenance, keep the walkway, and five deliverables. The reply took 63 seconds.

It opened by restating the site. "You're in Zone 8a with 4-6 hours of sun and dry, acidic soil under pines." The soil was its inference; we had not mentioned it. Then it declared its assumptions: "Walkway length: about 36 ft; planting depth each side: about 5 ft." It could see the photo. It could not measure it.

The plant list, for both sides combined, was eleven kinds of plant: 6 Ilex vomitoria 'Schilling's Dwarf' (dwarf yaupon holly), 4 Camellia sasanqua 'Shi-Shi Gashira', 120 Ophiopogon japonicus 'Nana' (dwarf mondo grass), 6 Amsonia hubrichtii, 4 Baptisia australis, 12 Helleborus x hybridus, 18 Heuchera villosa 'Caramel', 16 Hemerocallis 'Happy Returns', 12 Dryopteris erythrosora (autumn fern), 12 Spigelia marilandica and 150 Narcissus bulbs.

That is 360 plants and bulbs by our count, with a pot size for each and an itemised budget of "about $2,200-$2,500".

The fifth deliverable, "show me what it would look like", came back as a diagram drawn in letters (Y for yaupon, C for camellia and so on) and a month-by-month description of what would be in bloom. So we asked ChatGPT for an actual picture: the same photo, planted with its eleven plants. The next three sections show what it drew.

The picture at the top of this page is the result, and it is attractive at a glance. Drag the slider and the problems show. The porch, its railing and its pots are gone, replaced by more wall and more windows. The walkway no longer bends toward the door; it runs straight back to a lawn.

A strip of grass is drawn across the path itself. The bird feeders on the post became lanterns, and the pine straw became dark mulch.

We had asked it to keep the walkway and the house exactly as they are. ChatGPT does not edit your photo; it paints a new one that resembles it, and the parts you care about can change with everything else.

Nothing in the picture is labeled, so nothing tells you which shrub is the camellia and which is the holly. We also asked ChatGPT for a single bed along the fence in our backyard photo, keeping the lawn, and to name every plant. Flower beds came back across much of the lawn, and the picture has no plant names on it.

There is nothing to drag. To change a ChatGPT design you describe the change and it draws the scene again. We gave it its own picture and wrote: "Move the camellia that is on the left side of the walkway to the right side of the walkway. Change nothing else in the picture."

Drag the slider. The pink shrub on the right grew larger, and a pink shrub still stands on the left. Everything else moved too: the walkway took a new curve, the lamp post and the path light were replaced, the clump of copper heuchera at the bottom right became one large gold plant, and the daffodils and ferns on both sides shifted. One requested change came with many we did not ask for.

Then we sent the original request a second time, word for word. The second picture is a different garden, with different plants in different places and a different edge to the path. You cannot build on a design that comes out differently each time you ask for it.

We asked ChatGPT for a top-down planting plan of the two beds, to scale, with every plant labeled and the quantity of each, using its own list. It returned the diagram below in 48 seconds.

There is not a single quantity on it, and no scale or dimensions. The walkway is a straight strip, though ours curves. Three names are misspelled: "Lentenn Rose", "Helleborus x hybriedus" and "Baptisia autralis", the last one twice. The daylilies are missing and the mondo grass edge is not labeled. Autumn fern is labeled three times.

It drew five yaupon hollies where the list says six, and five circles under the camellia label where the list says four.

Compare that with what a planting plan has to hold: each bed's real size, every plant placed and counted, and a schedule of names, quantities and prices. In Sow, Planting Plans finds the beds on the satellite view of your property, gives each bed its area, sun and plant count, and prices the whole schedule before you export it.

A good deal, and it is worth being fair about it. Every plant on ChatGPT's list is a real species or cultivar with a correct botanical name. It used the zone and the sun hours we gave it, read "under pines" as dry acidic soil without being told, and organised the palette the way a planting designer would: evergreen structure, a groundcover edge, perennials for colour and bulbs for spring.

It gave a mature size and on-centre spacing for every plant, which neither Neighborbrite's free plant list nor Sow's web Shopping List PDF does, a cost estimate with a line per plant, and care notes for the first season. If what you wanted was a shortlist to take to a nursery, you have one.

Here is the list, from our tests, each with what Sow does instead. The tables below put ChatGPT, Sow and Neighborbrite side by side.

• No plant library

  ChatGPT names plants from what it learned in training. There is no catalog to browse, no photo of each plant, and no record of zone, sun or mature size to check its picks against; its own hedges, "Caramel (or Georgia Peach)", show it recalling rather than looking up. Sow designs from a library of 12,000+ outdoor plants, each with zone, sun, mature size, bloom and care data.

• No drag and drop

  You cannot pick up a plant and move it. Every change is a new picture, and in our test one change rewrote the scene. In Sow you tap a species to remove it, change how many, or swap it, and the Editor lets you drag plants, furniture, lighting and paving onto your photo by hand.

• No top-down planting plan

  Its plan had no quantities, no scale and misspelled names. Sow's Planting Plans finds your beds on the satellite view, fills each one with counted plants, and prices the schedule.

• No care after planting

  ChatGPT does not keep a record of what went in the ground or turn it into a care schedule. Sow gives every plant month-by-month care, and in the US its care tasks move with the local forecast.

• It redraws your house

  We asked it to keep the house and walkway exactly as they were, and the porch disappeared while the walkway changed shape. In our test Sow planted the same photo and kept the house, the porch, the curving walkway and the bird feeders where they were.

• A different garden every time

  The same request, sent twice, gave two different designs. A Sow design is saved, and you change it one plant at a time.

• Unnamed plants

  The picture carries no names, so you cannot point at a shrub and learn what it is. Every plant in a Sow design is named and opens its own page.

• It guesses your bed size

  ChatGPT assumed a 36-foot walkway with 5-foot beds, and every quantity followed from that guess. Sow measures each bed from the satellite view and counts plants from their mature spread.

• Prices are estimates, not listings

  "$42" for a dwarf yaupon has no nursery behind it. Sow checks the prices at 18 online nurseries every day and links each plant to where you can buy it.

• No invasive-plant check

  It put 12 Lenten roses in a Raleigh bed without noting that the North Carolina Invasive Plant Council's 2023 list includes hellebores. Sow's BloomBot on the web reviews your saved plants against your state's invasive plant lists.

Brainstorming. If you have a bare bed and no idea what a cottage border even contains, a reply like ours is a better starting point than most magazine articles, because it is about your conditions rather than a stock photo.

Shortlists. Ask for ten part-shade evergreens for zone 8a that stay under four feet, and you get a list to look up. Then look them up.

Explaining terms. Mature spread, on-centre spacing, drifts, why you cut Baptisia back in winter: it explains these patiently and in plain words, and it will answer the follow-up question you were embarrassed to ask.

Sanity-checking a plan from somewhere else. Paste in a plant list from an app or a nursery and ask what will outgrow the bed.

Our text reply was as good as it was because the brief was specific. Here is the recipe.

The same photo, the same day, in Sow on an iPhone: a planted version of the actual walkway with the house, porch and bird feeders still in place, and a plant list of five species with botanical names and quantities (The Fairy Rose, Rosa x hybrida, x8; Foxglove Sugar Plum, Digitalis purpurea, x28; Hawera Daffodil x66; Anemone x14; and one more).

The sunlight came from the saved space (part sun, zone 8a). Tap any species and you get Remove, Fewer, More and Swap.

On the Sow website the same photo came back as "Romantic Cottage Walkway" with five named plants linked to catalog pages, each carrying zone, sun, mature size, bloom and care data. The web Shopping List PDF gives a quantity, a unit price and a line total per species with an estimated total, the unit price being the lowest listed across the online nurseries Sow tracks.

Neighborbrite, on its limited free tier, gave a five-cultivar palette in about 60 seconds, an image in about 33, and a plant list with quantities and nursery prices (41 plants, about $1,049) on the first design. No mature sizes, and edits are regenerations.

Sow is free to start; Pro from $39.99 a year on the web ($59.99 a year through the App Store); Pro+ $99.99 a year. Neighborbrite has a limited free tier with a watermark, Pro at $24.99 a month, and watermark removal only on Business at $49.99 a month. Prices checked October 2026. Sow has no AR, no 3D walkthrough and no hardscape CAD.