Hardcore gardeners sometimes, when no one else is listening, talk quietly to their prize blooms. But at next year’s Chelsea flower show, visitors will be encouraged to have a chat with its first ever AI-powered garden.
The garden designer Tom Massey has partnered with Microsoft to create the Avanade “intelligent” garden. Sensors in the soil are partnered with an AI trained on Royal Horticultural Society plant data and gardening advice, meaning visitors can ask the garden: “How are you?”
Massey said: “It could answer: I need a bit more water, I can do with a haircut, maybe.”
Photo: AFP
As well as making gardening easier and more fun, Massey said it could have wider applications. The wireless sensors hidden in the soil measure moisture, nutrient levels, acidity and alkalinity. These will connect to a computer in a pavilion in the garden, which people will be able to consult to see how the garden is doing.
“It’s supposed to be interactive,” Massey said. “It’s supposed to be showcasing this really kind of new emerging technology, and also saving resources.”
He said the simple sensor technology could be rolled out across large estates, so rather than having automatic watering systems which switch on depending on the time, the plants are only watered when the soil moisture drops below a certain level.
“We are wasting so much water and London is at risk of running out of water in coming years,” he said. “Imagine how much water you could save in a big development if you only use water when needed. Irrigation systems come on at a regular time to water, whether it’s needed or not.”
The garden itself would not be futuristic in its design, he said. “We wanted it to feel green and organic and earthy.” It will feature mushrooms as well as climate-resilient trees, which will be monitored by an AI assistant, and lots of peaceful green planting.
The RHS has adapted its system to be as energy efficient as possible. Jon Simpson, the society’s director of IT, said: “With AI, you do have the question of, does it consume more energy using data centers, so yes it can be detrimental but it’s about how you use it. What we are doing is training more traditional AI models against the RHS database, which is basically called a small language model, which is far more efficient and effective.”
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
RSS