CultivAgents: Cultivating Relationship-Centered Multi-Agent Systems for Personalized Gardening
May 22, 2026·
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1 min read
Yiyang "Diana" Wang
Moeiini Reilly
Britney Johnson
Kefei Yan
Alex Cabral
Josiah Hester
CultivAgents system overview (adapted from Figure 1 of the paper).Abstract
Gardening is critical to support well-being, cultural continuity, and food autonomy, yet existing digital tools often provide generic advice that overlooks gardeners’ skills, local ecologies, seasons, and cultural contexts. We introduce CultivAgents, a relationship-centered multi-agent system for personalized, socio-culturally grounded gardening support. Grounded in ethics of care, CultivAgents coordinates multiple specialized agents: an Experience Agent that adapts guidance to users’ skill levels, an Environmental Agent that grounds advice in local and seasonal conditions, and an Ethnobotanical Agent that connects plants to cultural knowledge and histories. We evaluated CultivAgents through a three-phase mixed-methods study with domain experts (n=3), HCI researchers (n=7), and community gardeners (n=5). Results suggest that CultivAgents helped gardeners translate interest into situated action, with community gardeners reporting increased confidence, motivation, and trust in acting on AI advice. The work advances relationship-centered AI, offering design implications for multi-agent systems that support food sovereignty, community resilience, and cultural preservation.
Type
Publication
arXiv preprint
Abstract
Gardening supports well-being, cultural continuity, and food autonomy, yet digital tools often give generic advice that overlooks gardeners’ skills, local ecologies, and cultural contexts. We introduce CultivAgents, a relationship-centered multi-agent system grounded in ethics of care that coordinates an Experience Agent, an Environmental Agent, and an Ethnobotanical Agent to deliver personalized, socio-culturally grounded support. A three-phase mixed-methods study with experts, HCI researchers, and community gardeners found that CultivAgents helped gardeners translate interest into situated action and increased their confidence, motivation, and trust in acting on AI advice.
