At this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show, award-winning garden designer Matt Keightley will unveil three gardens - not surprising, considering he has been there, and done this before at the show. But this time, these designs were created using AI.
Each of the three gardens - a compact urban terrace, a restorative rural retreat and a nature-led woodland garden – were designed using Spacelift, a new subscription-based AI app developed by Keightley that aims to make garden design accessible to all. It already has 9,000 people on the waitlist, says the company.
But the use of AI in garden design is a touchy subject in the industry, and the launch of the app and appearance of these gardens at the show has created a backlash from some garden designers, and the professional body that represents them, the Society of Landscape and Garden Designers (SGLD).
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Keightley has trained the AI with his own methodology of spatial flow, proportion, balance and harmony that makes a garden design work. To use, the gardener scans their outdoor space, describes what they want and their budget, and receives a photorealistic, buildable plan within minutes. Users then receive planting plans and material recommendations, access ‘shop-the-look’ functionality to source products directly, and can connect with recommended local tradespeople if they don't want to build the garden themselves. A full design pack includes to-do lists and next steps.
Future features of the app could include carbon impact tracking, native planting recommendations and biodiversity-led design guidance, helping homeowners make better choices without needing specialist knowledge.
If people are blindly tapping into ChatGPT: 'Give me my fantasy dream outdoor living garden', they're going to get really impressive visuals back, but it might not work in reality
Keightley has spent a decade developing the app, which will be launched this week at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. He says it is aimed squarely at 'DIY' gardeners with lower budgets. "We're trying to grow a new market where a design studio or quality, well-informed information isn't available or is unattainable or unaffordable," he explains. "We're trying to fill the gap between people drawing on inspiration from the likes of Pinterest or going to Chelsea and seeing a garden, and then being a little bit lost, heading to the garden centre and buying one of everything. The company's research has shown that the average British homeowner would spend £3,268 on their garden with a design plan they trusted.
"If people are blindly tapping into ChatGPT 'give me my fantasy dream outdoor living garden', they're going to get really impressive visuals back, but it might not work in reality. It might not work contextually for your space or with the right plants. Spacelift goes through my 25 years of design experience, my design rules and thinking before it generates anything. And so it's considering scale and proportion and different styles and layering, planting and all of those things that make for what I would hope to be a good design."
But the app has created a strong backlash from garden designers on social media, with many stating that AI cannot replace human creativity and the feeling that a garden evokes, and others worrying that they may soon be out of a job. The designers' professional body, the SGLD, has even taken the step of issuing a public statement about AI ahead of Chelsea.
In it, SGLD Chair Andrew Duff said: "As a practising garden designer myself, I recognise that artificial intelligence is becoming an increasingly visible part of the wider design landscape and, like many creative professions, garden design will continue to evolve alongside new technologies.
"However, I believe it’s important to be clear about what professional garden designers actually do. Successful garden design is an art form. It is rooted in creativity, collaboration, experience and human connection. While technology may offer useful tools, it cannot replicate the insight, empathy and personal engagement that comes from working with a skilled garden designer to create a living, evolving natural space within the home.
"Good design begins with listening and observing - understanding how people want to live and how gardens function over time. It is about far more than generating attractive images or ideas. It requires professional judgement, technical expertise, site understanding and ongoing collaboration with clients, contractors and specialists."
We put these comments directly to Keightley.
"I agree with 85% of what Andrew Duff said," he responded. "AI can't replace that sense of place and the feeling you get. But this app creates a new marketplace. The net result is going to be thousands more well planned, and most likely more sustainable gardens, because the plants aren't being swapped out every year, up and down the country. AI or not, that cannot be a bad thing. We all bang the drum every time Chelsea comes around that we want gardens and gardening to be more accessible. This does that."
It is not the first time that talk of AI in a Chelsea garden has created debate. In 2025, Tom Massey and Je Ahn's Avanade Intelligent Garden was not AI designed, but used AI’s data processing power to analyse and provide tailored plant care, especially for trees in urban environments, a third of which fail in the first year after planting. The garden explored the horticultural potential of AI “in the face of the climate and biodiversity crisis and in the harsh urban environments that we are designing gardens for,” according to Massey. When he first announced that the show garden was include the use of AI, there was a similar response from gardeners and designers.
Keightley says that during the building of the gardens on the site at Chelsea (ironically, right next to a show garden that encourages to get people off their screens) many people working at the show have approached him to discuss the gardens and the use of AI design. "I love that people are willing to take the time and give me the opportunity to actually talk them through it," he says. "It's going to be an interesting show. I think there's going to be plenty of conversations... it's going to be one of those Marmite things, isn't it?"
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