High-Tech Smart Gardening Products That Will Transform Your Yard

You've probably already outfitted your yard with the essentials: pots of seasonal flowers, neat garden beds, a lush green lawn, and so on. These basics require a ton of upkeep — between monitoring weather conditions, water schedules, light exposure, and manual work, like weeding and mowing — gardening is a full-time job. Sure, you already have a big lawn mower, which is faster than individually clipping blades of grass with scissors, but what if you had an autonomous lawn mowing robot that takes care of the entire chore on its own or sprinklers that know to account for rain or extra sun? Smart gardening technology is changing the game for many home gardeners. We wanted to take a look at what products could actually make a difference for our readers, finding our top five smart gardening products that'll transform your yard.

When selecting these products, we looked for a few qualities — they needed to save you time, like the automatic weeding robot from Tertill, take away the guesswork of gardening, like the soil monitor from The Connected Shop, or make your garden stand out, such as the Philips Hue solar lights — some of these products even offer multiple benefits. We also looked for products that delivered great results without a premium price, opting for the more affordable devices available. Additionally, four out of five of our selected products can be controlled remotely from an app, providing convenience and ease of use. 

Plenty of folks say gardening is simple. Just water the plants when they need it, and that's that. But for some of us, it's not so simple. Even with sprinklers or a regularly scheduled watering time, many factors can determine how often your garden needs watering, including sun exposure, rain, humidity, or dry air conditions. That's when a soil monitor device can come in handy. With The Connected Shop's smart soil monitor, you can track fertility levels, light exposure, and soil moisture in your outdoor garden beds and indoor plant pots. 

Most manual, analog soil monitors or small digital LED screens don't allow remote data collection. This smart soil monitor comes equipped with an app that allows you to track all of this information, even when you're away from the garden. This feature is spectacular when you're out of town and need to send word to skip watering or turn the sprinklers on for an extra five minutes on super hot days. With this device, you won't have to worry about over or under-watering again. 

The Smart Plant Water Meter and Health Sensor from The Connected Shop is currently available for $154.90. 

Automatic sprinklers have been around for a couple of decades at this point, but many don't have the optimization and customization capabilities of the Orbit B-hyve Smart Irrigation Controller. With Orbit's smartphone app, you can remotely control and manually water your lawn and garden beds from anywhere, which is a great feature, especially if you travel a lot and can't always be home to tend to your garden. 

Beyond that, the B-hyve also collects local weather data to automatically adjust watering schedules, taking the guesswork out of lawn and gardening maintenance. The B-hyve pauses its schedule in case of rain or snow and adjusts to increase watering during times of drought. Another great feature of the Orbit B-hyve is that you can create multiple zones that follow specific schedules, which is ideal if you have a patch of lawn that gets a ton of direct sunlight or drought-tolerant plants that need far less water than others. 

Customers were pleased that this model comes with an LED control panel, similar to traditional digital sprinkler timers, as well as the app. Additionally, you won't need to hire professionals to install this system, as many reviewers noted that the setup was comprehensive and easy. 

The Orbit B-hyve smart sprinkler controller is available from the Orbit website for $129.99 or on Amazon for $112.95. 

Ever wondered how the evening shots of gardens in magazines manage to look so stunning? The answer comes down to lighting. Without proper outdoor lighting, even the most stunning of gardens will look like nothing more than shadowy shapes. Give your yard the special treatment with Philips Hue Lily Outdoor Smart Spot Lights. These posts can be installed in soft ground, driven in by a stake. The LED light bulbs can be controlled via an app, allowing you to customize the brightness of the bulbs and choose from a ton of color options, so you can really control the atmosphere and ambiance of your garden. 

One thing to consider before purchasing the Philips Hue outdoor lights is that they need to be connected to a Hue Bridge, which isn't included with these lights. However, if you already own a Hue Bridge and use it for other Hue products, you can connect these outdoor lights to the same one. In addition to the app, the lights are also compatible with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, and Google Assistant. Additionally, the single-pack light doesn't come with a power supply, which upset many customers, who realized only after ordering that they needed to buy a 3-pack of the lights to get all the components. 

A three-pack of the Philips Hue Lily outdoor spotlights costs $234.44 on Amazon, and a separately sold Hue Bridge costs $46.99 on Amazon.

Keeping your lush green lawn maintained can feel like a Sisyphean task. After all your hard work under the glaring sun trimming your grass, it seems to grow back just as quickly. That's why many are turning to robot lawnmowers. These handy devices work much like the very popular robot vacuum cleaners, but instead of sucking up dust bunnies, they cut down grass blades. Our top pick for a robot lawn mower is the SUNSEEKER L22 Plus. You set up the boundary of your yard with a perimeter wire, which keeps the robot from making its way across all the neighborhood yards. From the smart app, you can control where your mower goes and keep track of where it is at all times. 

We are the first to admit that there are plenty of downsides to remote-controlled lawnmowers, and that's true for the SUNSEEKER L22 Plus as well. At approximately $1,000, this is not a cheap device, and the cost can be difficult to justify. However, considering that other top models run for several thousand dollars apiece, this is not a tall price comparison. For instance, the Husqvarna 450XH EPOS costs $5,899.99, over $4,500 more than the SUNSEEKER. Reviewers also noted that the boundary wire does limit the customizability of the mapping function, making it difficult to use on odd-shaped lawns, but the mower still has many 5-star reviews. 

Purchase the SUNSEEKER L22 Plus from Amazon for $999.99. 

With the advent of lawnmowing robots, you can be sure that more robot gardening devices will follow. One of the first to catch our eyes is the robotic weeder from Tertill. If you languish the hours spent on hands and knees doing back-breaking labor while removing unwanted weeds from your yard, you'll love this new helper. Using a string to trim, the Tertill weeder makes easy work of existing weeds. The Tertill is not fully autonomous yet, as it does not connect to a separate app. However, as the first robot weeder on the market for personal use instead of commercial, it remains a very impressive piece of technology that can really improve your yard. 

The Tertill is solar-powered, so you won't have to worry about plugging it in or changing its batteries regularly. According to the manufacturer's website, it can maintain a 200-yard garden and generally operates for 1 to 2 hours per day. It detects weeds from plants by height, which means you don't want to use this device on freshly planted gardens. It also comes with row guards to rope off certain areas of the garden. 

The Tertill weeding robot can be purchased directly from the Tertill website and is available for $149.00.