Smart Garden: what is a smart garden and do you need one?

Smart Gardens are arriving in shops in increasing numbers. They are purported to be the answer to a lack of gardening space and time, and will grow edibles (or ornamentals) with the help of an app, water, growing medium and a little bit of input from you.

But what exactly is a Smart Garden and do they work? The Gardens Illustrated team tried them out for you and here's what we discovered.

Click and Grow’s Smart Garden 27: can it feed the family?

Jump to

• What is a Smart Garden?
• What can you grow in a Smart Garden?
• How does a Smart Garden work
• What are Smart Garden pods?
• Is a Smart Garden for you?
• The best Smart Garden to buy for your home
• Click and Grow Smart Garden 9
• Urban Plant Growers Indoor Smart Garden Combo Kit
• Veritable Classic Smart Garden
• Click and Grow Smart Garden 27

What is a Smart Garden?

A Smart Garden is an indoor garden, usually housed in a small-ish plastic box, which has an inbuilt grow light, space for growing 'pods', or soil, and seeds. It will indicate when water is low - either by connecting to your phone via an app, or by visual means, with a counter. It provides the amount of light needed to grow your crops, and so doesn't need to be placed near a windowsill.

What can you grow in a Smart Garden?

There are many varying sizes of Smart Garden on the market, including the family-sized Smart Garden 27 from Click and Grow, which we have also tested. A smart garden can stretch to tomatoes, but in most Smart Gardens you'd grow herbs, or salad leaves. Obviously no root vegetables - think crops that don't take up too much root space.

How does a Smart Garden work?

The answer to this depends a little on the type of model you have, but mostly a Smart Garden is a vessel of sorts, that is connected to a power source, which has space for growing 'pods' already containing seed – or space for soil (and seeds). You pour water into the chamber of the vessel and the water is fed to the plants as they grow. An integrated overhead lamp provides enough light for as long as is needed for your plants. Sometimes Smart Gardens don't use soil and just rely on water - hydroponics - but the new models mostly all use soil, or a growing media that isn't just water.

Several of the new Smart Gardens connect with your phone to provide easy care. You can be alerted when the water is low, for example. Many still simply use a way of telling you that the water tank needs a top up.

What are Smart Garden pods?

These are little pods of soil or growing media containing seeds, usually provided as part of your Smart Garden kit, that slot into the vessel. The pods proved with the Click Grow Smart Garden are specially formulated to provide the maximum nutrients needed for your plants. Some Smart Gardens provide the growing media, but not the seeds, as with the Urban Plant Growers Indoor Smart Garden Combo kit below. You can select the pods (crops you want to grow) you want when you buy the Smart Garden, or you can buy them later, once you're initial pods have run out. There are also various pod subscriptions, so you can keep getting send pods in the post.

Is a Smart Garden for you?

As you'll see in our product tests below, each Smart Garden does something slightly different. But overall Smart Gardens are created for those of us who have little or no access to outdoor soil for growing, who have little time available to grow your own, but would still like the benefit of homegrown crops. They can be good for starting out children on a growing journey, and for people who live in flats who have enough space on a worktop to house a herb area.

Do Smart Gardens work with an app?

Some Smart Gardens come with an app, a little like the Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 tested below, but rather than alert you when your Smart Garden needs attention, it's more a guide on how to care for your plants. The Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 PRO, which we haven't tested, can be controlled by an app: you can adjust the light levels from your phone and set the light cycle up using it too. The app technology seems at its early days, however, so most Smart Gardens don't have an accompanying app as yet.

The best Smart Garden to buy for your home

Click and Grow Smart Garden 9

Pros: stylish look, plants germinated successfully
Cons: very bright light and quite bulky

All of the seeds we germinated in the Click and Grow Smart Garden 9 and grew well (the company offers to replace any plants that do not sprout) and within around four weeks we had lettuce leaves to harvest – enough for one large salad. The basil was by far the most useful plant grown, as it could be picked from over a long period of time, when needed. The tomatoes took around eight weeks to produce any tiny fruits. They will probably produce a handful of mini tomatoes in total.

However the LED grow light is extremely bright and there's no on/off switch on the lamp, so if you want to sync it with the sun you’ll need to make sure you plug it in initially at the correct time (it is on for 16 hours and off for eight). The water tank holds enough water for a month, but it is difficult to tell when the tank is filled up fully – the floating ball does not seem to rise, even when several litres of water have been added to it.

At £195.95, this smart garden is not a cheap option, especially when you can buy the same produce all year around at the supermarket at a fraction of the price. This smart garden works best for growing herbs, which you can snip from as you need them, and would come into its own in winter when light levels are low. There is an accompanying app but it does not control the smart garden and instead aims to make you a ‘plant expert’.

Plants you can grow: 50 options, including herbs, salad, lavender and wild strawberries.
Overall marks out of ten: 7
Easy to set up: 8/10
Easy to maintain: 8/10
Value for money: 2/10
Taste: 7/10
Instructions: 7/10
Light: 1/10
Plant pods cost: £2.20

Looking for our full review of the Click and Grow Smart Garden 27?

Urban Plant Growers Indoor Smart Garden Combo Kit

Pros: compact, stylish look, value for money, washable (reusable) vermiculite growing medium
Cons: two, small growing section, slightly confusing instructions, no seeds included (could be a pro!)

Able to fit on windowsills and in cramped corners, this smart garden looks very sleek – impressive, considering its price tag.

Inside the plant pots, standard compost has been swapped for vermiculite, which looks like small wood chippings. The good news is it’s washable, so you can reuse it again and again.

Unlike other smart gardens, this one doesn’t come with seeds, so you can choose your own – although opening the upper grid to sprinkle them inside can be tricky.

There’s also no clock on the automatic on/off lamp, so if you want to sync it with the natural sunrise/sunset (important for retaining a light-dark cycle), you’ll need to get up early to turn it on for the first time. Alternatively, you can manually control the ‘reading light’.

Our test parsley grew well – if a little more abundantly in one pot than the other. We also appreciated the pipette-style nutrients bottle for easy feeding, and the beep/flash alerts, which tell you when the water tank needs topping up.

All in all, this smart garden is a good, inexpensive option for beginners and those who often forget to water their plants, but the small growing containers might frustrate more experienced gardeners.

Plants you can grow: the makers recommend trying herbs and leafy greens, starting off with easy options such as lettuce and basil
Marks out of ten: 8
Easy to set up: 8/10
Easy to maintain: 9/10
Value for money: 10/10
Taste: 9/10
Instructions: 4/10
Light intrusion: 7/10

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Veritable Classic Smart Garden

Pros: the plants grew easily and tasted great, they were easy to cut and come again.
Cons: you can't rely on the amount of water needed, the light is too bright, price, the replacement pods are pricey.

This smart garden is a no-frills option of smart garden offering a compact growing container, space for four grow pods, but no app. We grew fennel, dill, tatsoi and mountain savoury in ours and it took ten days for the seeds to germinate on the first three but our mountain savoury never appeared. From the point of germinating for the two months of testing, we had continuous growth of all three of the plants which emerged, and when we cut them after a month, they grew again very happily.

The dill and fennel were very tasty and the tatsoi is a great addition to salads and stir-fries. The water tank seemed to be constantly in need of water, but we did experiment a little and actually the pods kept damp after a little while of not watering and the plants were absolutely fine.

The main downside to this smart garden is the light. Even for a smaller option, the light was really intrusive in the kitchen, and we worried about moths being attracted to it through the window when it was on at night. We grew other herbs alongside this in the traditional way, and although using pots and soil was much more enjoyable a process, the Smart Garden did make the process simple, efficient and quick.

Plants you can grow: There are over 70 plant pods (or Lingots) that Veritable make, and you can choose anything from tomatoes, mini peppers, chillies, purple basil to edible flowers and wild strawberries.
Marks out of ten: 8
Easy to set up: 8/10
Easy to maintain: 7/10
Value for money: 6/10
Taste: 9/10
Instructions: 5/10
Light intrusion: 2/10
Plant pod costs: £6.95

Click and Grow Smart Garden 27

Pros: Easy to set up, easy to harvest, crops tasted good
Cons: Expensive, too bright, difficult to control pests (I got an aphid infestation)

In order to use the Smart Garden 27 you’ll need quite a bit of space. But that space allows you to grow from 27 pre-seeded pods and to start with you’re given three varieties of pods to grow: tomato, basil, and lettuce.

The garden was really easy to set up and the growing instructions were all clear. It took around 4 weeks to have a crop of lettuce and basil, whereas the tomatoes were slower growing and at almost 8 weeks in, have formed small fruits. The lettuce and basil have both exceeded our expectations in terms of taste, but staggering the plantings is advised, in order to have crops over a longer period.

The lighting for the garden was far too bright to have on at the recommended times, so we ended up having the lights on largely at night. The water reservoir didn’t keep the plants watered for a month once they were fully grown, so needed a bit more maintenance than expected.

Overall, it was a nice way to bring fresh produce into my home, but at full price (plus the cost of replacement pods), this certainly wouldn’t be cheaper than buying the same products at the supermarket all year.

Marks out of ten: 6
Easy set up: 10/10
Easy to maintain: 8/10
Value for money: 2/10
Taste: 7/10
Instructions: 8/10
Light intrusion: 1/10
Plant pod costs: £2.77

Read our full review of the Click and Grow Smart Garden 27

Overall

The development of the 'Smart Garden' is an intriguing prospect in the world of gardening. While a Smart Garden isn't a replacement for growing in earth, planting up your own pots and learning about how plants grow by tending to them, there is still enjoyment and satisfaction to be had from these products. For those living in flats, with limited access to garden or growing space they can provide a great corner of the kitchen with greens you can add to your salad. In most cases, the growing media and watering system means you don't have to have lots of time to have lots of crops. The grow lights on some of the bigger options are quite intrusive, though, and so we'd recommend finding a place and time where the light doesn't bother you. Many of the products aren't cheap, but some offer care-free and easy methods of growing tasty crops.