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If you’ve ever felt stuck on a design decision—be it choosing the right couch, landscaping your yard, or remodeling a kitchen—then I’ve got a tale for you. There’s a lesson within—one that, in time, could make your life a bit easier. So sit back, relax, and let’s begin…
While we’d managed to get ten of our 30 purchased plants tucked into the front yard over the summer, we now faced a September reality: winter around the corner, twenty plants still in their pots, store tags fluttering in the breeze, their collective leafy voices asking, “Well? What’s the plan?”
How did we end up with 30 plants to begin with? Let’s rewind to mid April. My partner Carla and I were determined to add both curb appeal and a bit of privacy to our yard. For years, we’d struggled to settle on a vision—let alone one we both agreed on. Indecision leads to inaction, you know how it goes. So we tried hiring landscaping companies, hoping the pros would tease out a design we could agree on. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know the majority of landscape designers and architects do amazing work. We just happened to choose ones...who did not. In the end, the conceptual designs they sent back looked as convincing as a novelty fake mustache on a baby. On the left is one of the actual designs we received.
Frustrated, we decided to force our own hand by buying a large mix of plants upfront, figuring if they stared us down every day, we’d have no choice but to finally take action.
Cardinals and Blue Jays chirped, neighbors strolled by in shorts, and all the new plants swayed in the wind, still in their pots. It was now June. We had put precisely zero plants in the ground. However, the original plan started to take effect, as we began to crack under the pressure of the imposing botanical phalanx.
Inspired by our previous garden project that took the shape of a guitar, we intended to emulate that success by doing something similar in the front garden.
Using a garden hose as a layout guide we readied the shovels. Only after we completed the initial digging did we realize, and could not unsee, the shape resembled a certain part of the male body. With what we’ll call the "Eggplant Garden" shaped, we faced the familiar struggle—trying to visualize what could go where, then hoping we could communicate it to each other. Predictably, it did not go well. Frustrated yet again, I decided it was time to turn to a tool I know quite well: augmented reality (AR).
Having written software for AR glasses since 2015 and founded companies around AR products, I have an intimate knowledge of the technology. Specifically, what works, what doesn’t, and how to build AR apps that solve real challenges.
One of the great things about AR is its ability to show a design at scale, on location, as if it already exists — it’s like seeing the future and being able to act on it now. That helps both professional designers, and trial-and-error specialists like us that use a tactic I call, “move shit around until it looks good.”
And that we did. Carla looked like Yannick Nézet-Séguin out there as she conducted our garden. Transporting virtual plants is a heck of a lot easier and more efficient than moving the real things. Once she came up with a layout she liked, she simply put the AR glasses, in this case the Apple Vision Pro, on my head. There was no lengthy explanation or vague pointing. It replaced “imagine this here and that there” with “see what I mean?”
It worked. We felt confident enough to put shovels back in the ground and provide sweet relief for a third of our plants desperate for a home. The results were pleasing.
Next up, the remaining roughly 20 plants. Of course, that “next up” is three months later, because as happens in life…life happens.
With September in full swing and winter around the corner, it looked like the initial plan of forcing our hand was about to backfire. Stressed knowing we’d potentially have the sap of 20 innocent plants on our hands, panic set it. Once again, we turned to AR for answers.
Let me ask you this, how useful would it be to see your idea not only now, but in some future state where it has changed? Let me elaborate. In the three months since our Eggplant Garden, I tooled around with an experiment in my AR software. A new feature I added allowed us to see the growth of a plant from its current size of lil’ twerp to full maturity with the move of a slider.
Think about this for a moment. You don’t have to guess or hope that what you plant today will provide you the privacy you want in future. You can adjust in real-time exactly what you’ll see today, tomorrow, in ten years. AR is quite mind-blowing when you realize the extent of what you can make of it.
Thanks to AR, I could position new trees, then kick back on my deck sofa (also built using AR) to see just how those junipers would mature. In a few years, they’d perfectly shield my view of my neighbor’s deck. Suddenly, I could picture myself sipping a vodka lemonade on some random summer Tuesday morning—utterly unwatched and unjudged.
Decision made. A couple of unseasonably warm days later and five junipers were suited and rooted, with another piece of the garden puzzle complete. For those keeping count, that’s roughly half of the 30’ish plants now in the ground.
Blink your eyes a few times. Now it’s mid-October. That got here quick, didn’t it? Since seasons in the Midwest turn quicker than Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl, we assumed we missed our window to finish with snow and a freezing ground a possibility any day now. Stressed, we resorted to trying, and succeeding, in returning half a dozen plants to Costco to minimize the losses. Nice. Embarrassment and guilt aside, we still had about ten plants and a large tree left. As fate would have it, fall had one last trick up its sleeve, and we were granted a few perfect days to get shit done.
Invigorated by our fortune, we threw on the yacht rock, grabbed old trusty (that’s not what we call our shovel, I just made that up), and brought out the AR headset. Once again, Carla went to work on a symphony consisting of hostas, dogwoods, crystalina Clethras, and a river birch tree named Arby (River Birch...RB...'Arby'. Get it? That’s literally how Arby’s restaurant got its name. Look it up).
Again, indecision was defeated. She was able to quickly experiment with layouts for our west foundation garden. Then, she could show me exactly what she had in mind rather than trying to tell me. You’ve heard the adage, “show, don’t tell.” AR exemplifies this by making virtual objects look real in your space. The effective tool paid dividends and we introduced the remaining plants to their forever home. A resounding success!
There was one other element I wanted to build into my Vision Pro app. I designed the shape of the west foundation garden in Vectorworks, a popular landscaping and architecture design software. I wanted to bring that design directly into my app and use the shape as a template to guide my shovel. Similar to how I used a guitar to shape my other garden years ago. Unfortunately, with the time crunch, I didn’t get it done in time to make it usable. The good news, however, we left this garden shape undefined with the intent to revisit using AR next year. Meaning, you’ll have to stop back in the spring to see how well it did, or did not work out.
Here’s the part where 90s English teachers would suggest “Tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” Since I probably still owe them homework, here goes it…
In the end, what started as a sea of potted plants and a mountain of indecision became something entirely manageable once we brought AR into the mix. Instead of another year of endless debates, vague sketches, and creating just one more Pinterest mood board, we had a tool in AR that let us preview our future garden in full-scale, right where it belongs. It didn’t matter if we were seeking privacy screening with junipers, getting the layout and spacing right for perennials, or making sure Arby (river birch…remember?) would grow to block a large portion of the street; AR let us see our next steps before we took them. Incredible!
Was it perfect? No. The Vectorworks integration for the garden shape went unfinished, leaving it for next year. Another issue, common to all AR, is finding high quality 3D models. Most 3D models have been created for presenting designs on small laptops or TV screens, not for walking amongst them. While the dogwoods and hostas looked convincing, some models—like the river birch and junipers—had a PlayStation 3 vibe.
So, AR didn’t solve everything, but it got us 80% of the way there. That was the lift we needed to transform a big, intimidating project into a manageable, even enjoyable, series of choices. It turned a stressful sprint against winter’s clock into a surprisingly creative exercise in shaping our environment. Damn, that sounds amazing when put like that, doesn’t it??
As I write this in early December, I peer through my bedroom office window. The ground is frozen and a sparse blanket of snow covers the backyard. And yet, right there stands Arby—firmly in the ground where his digital twin once resided. Without AR guiding our choices months ago, I suspect Arby would still be sitting in his pot, a would-be idea never fully realized. Instead, he’s thriving under the winter sky, a living testament to how augmented reality helped us turn a hazy concept into a rooted, tangible reality in our yard.
Remember that lesson I promised at the start? For an AR industry struggling to prove its everyday worth, my goal was to share a very real example of how this technology will help you make better and faster decisions. This is just one small hint of what’s to come—an early glimpse of how AR will shape our lives in the years ahead.
If you have any thoughts, feedback, or tips, reach out. You may just inspire or be featured in my next project.
In the years to come, AR glasses will have a profound effect on how we work, play, and get things done. Let’s not talk hypotheticals. Let’s craft the vision, roll up our sleeves, and build that reality!