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Front Page
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Garden Canvas
Inspiration
EcoScape started from a simple problem: people want sustainable gardens, but the advice online is either overwhelming (hundreds of plants, or with conflicting tips) or too generic, such as “use native plants”. We wanted a tool that turns your actual location + your goals (low-water, pollinators, natives, carbon impact) into a personalized garden plan you can act on, with sustainability feedback. One of our teammate’s parents recently bought a house in another state and is trying to build a garden from scratch in their own backyard. The climate and environment are very different from California, and they had no idea where to start. Most guides didn’t account for their specific location, soil, or water constraints. That’s where the idea for EcoScape came from - a tool that generates a sustainable, actionable garden plan tailored for you.
What it does
Generates location-aware plant recommendations (by ZIP code/climate region). Lets users search and add plants to a garden layout. Calculates sustainability metrics: Water Efficiency Pollinator Support Drought Resistance Biodiversity Carbon Impact Shows a scorecard so users can iterate and immediately see how design choices affect sustainability.
How we built it
Frontend (React): Interactive UI for browsing recommendations, adding plants, and viewing score changes. Backend (Flask): Integrates with the Flora API to fetch plant species and climate-by-ZIP data. Normalizes plant data into a consistent schema for the app. Scores designs using weighted aggregation across user-placed plants.
Challenges we ran into
One of the biggest challenges was retrieving plant information, specifically images and names, from the Flora API. In many instances the images were corrupted or didn’t exist, and the plant names were the scientific names. To avoid these issues, we had to convert the plants from their scientific names to their common names, and fetched plant photos from a different source. We were attempting to build a seamless, user friendly UI, and one challenge within that was removing the background of the plant images so they would blend in properly into the base garden image. Another challenge we faced was the fact that we had to make trade-offs on features that were less feasible. One feature we omitted was image recognition on which plants were present in any uploaded pictures so that we could modify the recommendations accordingly.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We designed a clean and easy-to-use interface that makes garden planning feel simple instead of overwhelming. Sustainability tools can often feel technical or data-heavy, but we focused on making EcoScape visually inviting and approachable so users actually enjoy experimenting with their garden planning. One of our favorite technical wins was making the plant images fully transparent. Instead of rectangular images with white backgrounds, the plants look like they naturally belong in the garden layout. This makes the drag-and-drop experience feel much more cohesive and realistic. Instead of using placeholder graphics, we integrated an API to retrieve real images of plants. This made the recommendations feel credible and grounded in reality. It also added a layer of trust and professionalism to the app, since users can see what the plants truly look like before adding them to their layout.
What we learned
Most of the project was frontend-focused, which pushed us outside our comfort zones. We’re all more familiar with backend development, so this experience helped us grow in UI design, layout structure, state management, and creating smooth user interactions. We gained a much deeper appreciation for how much thought goes into building an intuitive and polished user experience. We were already friends and part of the same club before this project. While that made communication comfortable, we had to learn how to shift into a professional team mindset by setting clear responsibilities, respecting differing ideas, giving constructive feedback, and making decisions collaboratively. As EcoScape focuses on gardens and sustainability, we spent time researching plants, ecosystems, water usage, biodiversity, and carbon impact. As computer science students, we spend a lot of time connected to our computers and this project reminded us of the importance of staying connected to nature as well. We learned that sustainability is not just a concept, it involves measurable design decisions that can make a real environmental difference.
What's next for EcoScape
In the future we hope to add more complex features such as image recognition for plants already existing in uploaded pictures of landscapes We hope to allow user to impose their digital landscapes onto a real backyard to see what the plants would look like in 3-dimensions Another useful feature would be a “Growth Simulation” that could show what the garden would look like in 5, or 10, or even 20 years.
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