The word ideate makes me tired.
It snaps me back to tech days with fluorescent-lit conference rooms, jargon-heavy decks, and the peculiar belief that creativity emerges from buzzwords rather than work. Somewhere between “circle back” and “let’s put a pin in that,” the actual act of thinking gets lost.
Ideate is an old word that somehow became a new corporate obsession sometime after 2005.
Stripped of the nonsense, to ideate simply means this: to imagine something new.
To design.
When I work with clients — as a garden designer and as someone who teaches design concepts— one of the most common challenges isn’t a lack of taste or effort. It’s the difficulty of moving beyond the obvious. Most people can imagine something. Fewer can imagine something better.
When invention stalls, we reach for familiar tools:
- We copy what worked for someone else.
- We collect inspiration on Pinterest.
- We wander nurseries and note what catches our eye.
- We lean on known styles and frameworks to narrow the field.
There’s nothing wrong with any of this. I use all of it. But these tools tend to orbit existing ideas. They rarely produce new ones.
If you want different results, you have to try a different approach.
Designing with Constraints
Counterintuitive as it sounds, the most reliable way to unlock creativity is not through freedom — but through limits.
This approach is foundational to design practice across disciplines — from landscape architecture to product development to organizational strategy.
Constraints force decisions. They interrupt default thinking. They reveal what actually matters.
When I need to push my own thinking — in a garden or anywhere else — I ask myself deliberately constraining questions:
- What if this entire layout were based on a single shape — a circle, a rectangle, an oval?
- What if I could use only one plant in my favorite color?
- What if I had to plant twenty trees — absurd, impractical, unavoidable?
- What if property lines didn’t exist, and I designed first, reconciled later?
- What if I combined two styles that shouldn’t work together?
- What if 75 percent of the plants had to be native to this region?
- What if I had to design this garden in a style I actively dislike — and make myself love it?
These questions aren’t prescriptions. They’re provocations.
Each one removes an easy answer and replaces it with a problem worth solving.
Why This Works
Constraints don’t limit creativity. They sharpen it.
I use the same questions when working on institutional strategy or editorial direction. What must stay? What must go? What happens if we remove the obvious option?
By introducing rules, you eliminate infinite choice — the enemy of clarity. You create friction, and friction generates form. You move from decoration to intention.
It’s not unusual for me to explore dozens of variations before arriving at one that feels inevitable. The goal isn’t speed. It’s depth.
This applies far beyond gardens.
Designing a space, a strategy, or an institution follows the same logic. Original ideas don’t appear fully formed. They emerge through disciplined experimentation — by testing boundaries, questioning defaults, and staying curious longer than is comfortable.
If you want better ideas, stop searching for inspiration.
Start by designing the constraints.
Clarity follows.
— Rochelle
+comments+