The Problems
Every problem we hit, and what it cost us.
We are designing, planning and building a real UK garden using AI instead of paying a designer 10 to 20 percent of the build cost. This is the running record of everywhere that went wrong. Each one explains what happened, why it happened and what actually fixed it. All of that is free.
4problems documented across3stages of one real garden
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Showing 4 of 4 problems
Concept illustrationGetting startedProblem 003How do I write a garden brief when I don't know what I want or what good design even looks like?
We had a scruffy garden, a rough plan, some photos and a vague sense that it should be nicer. What we did not have was any way to turn that into something anyone could design or build against.
What it was costing us
Weeks of circling. Every idea sounded reasonable, nothing could be ruled out, and there was no way to say no to a beautiful suggestion that had nothing to do with how we actually live.
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Concept illustrationGetting startedProblem 002How do I set AI up to help me run a garden project instead of starting from scratch every time?
Before a single measurement, a single quote or a single spade, we lost weeks to a problem nobody warns you about: the AI has no idea what project it is on, and by default it never will.
What it was costing us
Around twenty minutes of every single session spent re-explaining the same garden, and decisions made on Monday quietly contradicted on Thursday because nothing was written down anywhere the AI could reach.
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Concept illustrationMeasuring the gardenProblem 004How do I measure my garden so AI can actually use the numbers?
This is the one job AI cannot do for you, and the one job everything else it does depends on. It will happily design, render and cost a garden from numbers nobody has ever checked, and it will never once mention that it is guessing.
What it nearly cost us
A morning of measuring that would have produced a list of lengths nobody could rebuild a plot from, and no way to tell six months later what any of them had been measured from.
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Concept illustrationDesigning itProblem 001Why does AI get the size and position wrong when I ask it to add something to my garden plan?
Ask a consumer AI tool for a 4m x 3m pergola against the garage wall and you will get a picture of a pergola, not a 4m x 3m pergola. More precise prompting makes it worse.
What it cost us
Roughly forty hours of design work invested in geometry that could not be built from, and a budget calculated from quantities that were fiction.
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