AsterSketch, a new planting design platform, has been unveiled to landscape and garden professionals as a tool to connect design, research and presentation.

At its heart, the Living Plant Model™ is a plant database and design engine build around an initial library of more than 10,000 plants.

AsterSketch has been designed to work with multiple plant data sources, including designers’ own datasets. An integrated AI chat agent can also retrieve information on plants in real time and present its reference sources, allowing the designer to assess the information and decide what to use.

Using AsterSketch’s built-in CAD editor, designers can draw layout plans from scratch or import 3D models and existing garden or landscape design layouts. They can then search for and select appropriate plants, build planting compositions, save them as reusable plant palettes and develop visually rich planting plans within the same connected workflow.

Charles Leclercq, co-founder and design engineer, comments on the launch:

“Planting design combines creativity with an extraordinary amount of knowledge and information. Yet many of the tools available to designers were never built specifically around plants. We created AsterSketch to change that — connecting design, plant intelligence and professional outputs in one environment.”

Iona Montgomery, co-founder and landscape designer, also comments:

“As a landscape designer, I see AsterSketch as an opportunity to give designers back something increasingly valuable: time to think, design and respond to the challenges facing our landscapes. By streamlining the process, we can spend less time on fragmented tasks and more time creating resilient, biodiverse landscapes that are designed for the future.”

AsterSketch has been developed in collaboration with garden and landscape professionals, and will continue to do so as it looks to continue to expand the Living Plant Model™ and its planting design capabilities.