The Perfect Garden for Bees with AI
What would a garden look like if bees could plan it? The Pollinator Pathmaker is an AI tool, that helps design gardens so that they are perfect for insects.
Transcript
00:00 If bees could design their own garden, it would look like this.
00:05 At least according to Alexandra Daisy Ginsburg.
00:10 The garden in front of Berlin's Natural History Museum is her art project.
00:14 And an algorithm has chosen which plants are to grow here.
00:18 Every time we run the algorithm to create a new planting scheme,
00:24 the algorithm is optimizing the planting choices and arrangements
00:29 to serve the most diverse group of pollinating species possible.
00:33 So bees, wasps, moths, ants and many more.
00:37 Following the algorithm's specifications,
00:40 Ginsburg and her team planted 7,000 plants here in the heart of Berlin.
00:45 The project is called Pollinator Pathmaker.
00:50 To develop the algorithm,
00:52 Ginsburg and her team researched the exact needs of local pollinators.
00:56 The algorithm then generated a planting schematic with 150 plant species.
01:01 It even calculates how the garden will change throughout the year.
01:05 The algorithm chooses plants that are appropriate for each location,
01:13 so the soil conditions, the sunshine, and so on.
01:17 And then it arranges them.
01:19 It takes a subset to create unique schemes every time
01:22 and then arranges them in ways that suit different foraging styles
01:27 and optimizes to serve all the different insects.
01:30 Pollinators locate their food in different ways.
01:34 Some insects, such as bees, memorize the locations of flowers
01:38 and develop efficient flight routes to visit thousands a day.
01:41 The algorithm anticipates the pollinators' flight paths.
01:50 That's what the planting pattern is based on.
01:53 It looks unusual to the human eye,
02:00 but is designed around the way insects move around the garden.
02:04 You can use the algorithm yourself to calculate a plan
02:09 for an insect-friendly garden, free of charge.
02:12 The web-based tool is optimized for European wildlife,
02:17 but models for other regions could soon follow.
02:20 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:23 (upbeat music)