Ars Electronica, who was a host to the Telegarden for some time, as featured in the article, did a follow-up project called Telezone where people on the Internet could control a robot to build a miniature "city" -> https://ars.electronica.art/futurelab/project/telezone/

Careful not to click any of the "telegarden.org" links at the bottom. Looks like the domain expired and was taken over by a pornography website.

I would be really curious how they stopped ne'er-do-wells from damaging the plants intentionally.