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I love my garden and hate gardening.
These emotions are not as fundamentally opposed as they appear.
My front lawn(Image credit: Future /ChatGPT)
A beautiful garden is satisfying and lovely to look at.
Typically, the AIs do well at first but devolve in the long run.
Some of my earliest tests are a year or more old, and in AI years that’s decades.
My front lawn(Image credit: Future /ChatGPT)
Now, I did use ChatGPT Plus, the $20-a-month subscription-level AI that brings GPT-4 and DALL-E 3.
GPT-4 is notable because it’s been trained on information newer than GPT-3.5’s September 2021 cut-off.
My front and back lawns aren’t terrible, but there are issues.
On one side of the front of my house is a sparse landscape where most plants go to die.
The benefit of using an AIchatbotgoes beyond simple query and response.
It’s the conversation that makes it powerful.
My front lawn(Image credit: Future /ChatGPT)
It then detailed how each plant reacts to and handles limited sun or shade.
This made me feel comforted.
There’s a dogwood that grows almost weed-like outside one of my den windows.
ChatGPT’s plan(Image credit: OpenAI /ChatGPT)
Is it a weed?
How can I best care for it in my environment?"
(I can do this by speaking to the app or typing it in.)
My space for harvestable plants(Image credit: Future /ChatGPT)
That was all accurate and fair.
Later, I decided to trick ChatGPT and took a photo of a realistic-looking artificial bouquet.
“The bouquet in the picture features flowers that look very similar to artificial ones.
ChatGPT’s idea(Image credit: OpenAI / ChatGPT)
With my confidence in ChatGPT growing, I moved back to my landscaping projects.
As was often the case, ChatGPT was purposefully inexact in its response.
It then gave me a list of mulch types, and their benefits and deficits.
One of my biggest landscape problem areas is my backyard.
Possible causes included “soil compaction, nutrient deficiencies, pest and disease problems.”
It followed that with a list of things that I already do, except for aeration and pH adjustment.
Very smart, ChatGPT.
I followed by asking which grass seed I should use.
ChatGPT returned a clear list of five seed options suited to my climate.
Sources included Finegardening.com, Savvygardener, and the US Government.
I also asked ChatGPT to help me find a harvestable plant for a narrow flower bed alongside my house.
It suggested, among other things, strawberries.
One area where ChatGPT stumbled was when I asked it to create landscape images based on its suggestions.
They were cartoony, packed with too many plants, and with added landscape areas that do not exist.
That’s alright; I don’t need images to apply some of this advice.
