Maya Ellison

Design Editor

Covers the style guides and the before-and-after work — what a modern, Mediterranean or Japanese yard actually involves once you get past the mood board.

Editorial byline for the AI Landscape Design team. Articles under this name are researched, written and fact-checked in-house; every figure is sourced to a page you can open yourself.

10 posts

• Landscaping ideas for front of house: 10 that hold up

  10 front-of-house landscaping ideas with what each costs, what it needs and when it is wrong, plus the wall clearances and path widths that make them work.

• Front yard landscaping ideas that hold up

  Twelve front yard landscape ideas — smaller lawn, shade tree, street edge, driveway, low-water beds — with what each needs and when it is the wrong choice.

• Backyard landscaping ideas that survive year three

  Fourteen backyard ideas with what each one needs: sun hours, drainage, permit thresholds, mature plant size and the upkeep nobody mentions.

• How to get a landscape rendering

  Four ways to get a rendering of your yard — an app, an online service, a designer, or free inside a contractor's bid — with prices read in 2026.

• 3D vs photorealistic landscape rendering

  Three different deliverables are called a landscape rendering: a 3D model render, a photorealistic photo edit, and a rendered 2D plan. Which you need.

• Can an app replace a $2,500 landscape design plan?

  Design plans run $700 to $3,000. An app replaces the first $200 to $500 of that — the direction — and nothing downstream of it.

• How to use ChatGPT for backyard design

  What ChatGPT does well for a backyard project, where it fails, and the prompts worth pasting. Plus what to use instead for a render of your own yard.

• Does AI landscape design actually work?

  Yes for style, scale and settling arguments. No for cost, grading, slopes and permits. An honest answer task by task, including when to discard a render.

• Why does AI landscape design change my actual house?

  AI changed your house because it generated a new image instead of editing your photo. The mechanism, the two-second test, and what to do next.

• AI landscape generator from a photo: what it can and cannot do

  Upload one photo of your yard, get a redesign in about 10 seconds. What photo-to-photo AI changes, what it leaves alone, and where it fails.