Best smart garden gadgets: brilliant buys that will make every outdoor job easier

The best smart garden gadgets can help you refine a garden with all the best of nature but without getting your fingers too green in the process. 

From getting a robot to cut your lawn to blasting out weeds using an automaton, there are plenty of smart tech solutions to your gardening issues. While we may all want that 'gram garden look, many of us don't have the time or desire to get down and dirty in the mud to make it happen. That's where these gadgets earn their keep, doing the work for you.

A Stihl spokesperson told Livingetc that a robot lawn mower: "will mow little and often to ensure your lawn will always look freshly cut. It also cuts the grass clippings finely and drops them back into the ground to act as a fertilizer - so your lawn will look lusher over time too, without even lifting a finger."

So you need to ask yourself, do you want to spend more on automating your garden, or are you prepared to put in some work? Essentially the more you pay, the less effort is required on your part for many of these smart gardening gadgets. 

Are you seeking a setup that's easier to maintain, or do your garden ideas for this year include some crops too? And are security or pests an issue in your yard? Smart gardening tech can help here too.

Our top picks below include smart gardening gadgets from various brands, all ideal for homeowners and renters alike.

The best smart garden gadgets in 2022

If you're looking for the best robot lawn mower to save you time and effort, the Husqvarna Automower 415X might just be what you need. This impressive model boasts advanced navigation that prevents it from getting stuck, as well as ultra-quiet technology that lets you run it at night without disturbing others.

While the price may be a drawback, setting it up with your mobile phone is a breeze. Plus, it can handle slopes up to 40% and lawns up to 0.4 acres, making it perfect for hilly or uneven terrain. With the app, you can program and control the mower, and the weather timer even adjusts schedules based on the weather.

Livingetc rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

The Rachio 3 is our top pick for the best smart sprinkler controller and a great way to upgrade your watering setup for smart controls. This is the unit that essentially connects your hose system to the internet so it can be more easily controlled from anywhere.

This is ideal if you want to set up and control watering schedules from your smartphone. But it goes further with smart voice assistant controls allowing you to say, "Water the plants," and it's done. It'll even intelligently adapt based on the weather, stopping if there's rain.

You can input information like plant types, soil type, sun exposure, and more to get a super specific schedule lined up that's perfectly suited to your garden. While that can take a bit of effort initially to set up, after that, you don't need to do a thing, helping justify the price tag on this smart gardening gadget.

The Click And Grow Smart Garden 9 is a good-looking and easy way to get growing your crops indoors. That can mean starting indoors ready to plant out or simply growing those herbs right there in the kitchen where you're going to use them.

The great thing about this model is that all you need to do is load up the seed pods and water, and it'll take care of the rest. Pick from proprietary pre-seeded pods, with 50 choices, or use your own seeds. 

This will then automatically water them as and when they need optimal growth and minimal effort. It even has built-in pro-grow lights as well as nutrient and oxygen supply at the root level, meaning a perfect environment for growth.

This is a beautifully designed basket-style device that comes in white, gray, and beige options, so it can fit into your home decor perfectly. It's certainly not the cheapest way to grow, but it could quite possibly be the most effortless. There's even a companion app so you can monitor plant growth in detail.

The Tertill Weed-Eating Robot is a smart way to tackle weeds in your garden. This lets you do away with pesticides and the manual gardening effort as this seeks out and destroys weeds for you.

This little robot is solar-powered so that it can be left to its own devices largely. It will seek out anything growing under the height of its outer shell and will use a weed cutter system to remove it. This does come with metal guards to place around any seedlings you want left to grow safely. Since it's weatherproof, this can survive year-long without you needing to intervene. 

While this robot is Bluetooth enabled to connect to your phone, there isn't much need for this beyond basic maintenance controls. But the unit works on gardens up to 200 feet in size so that it can handle a larger space on its own.

The SmartPlant app is designed to make recognizing and maintaining plants easier. This has real, live experts available to help you. That means spotting what you have growing in your garden and being sent reminders on care is easy.

The app is well made with an easy-to-use layout and lots of smart features, including those helpful reminders. Organizing plants on the app is helpful, as is the ability to identify pests and diseases so that you can treat plants as early as possible. This will even help you with picking plants best suited to various areas of your home.

All the best features need to be paid for in the long run, but it's nice to have the free app to give it a trial to see if this is something that you would use.

The Nest Cam Outdoor is a fantastic option if you want to monitor your garden for security or to keep an eye on critters entering your space. This is a battery-powered camera making it super simple to install anywhere you need it outside.

The Nest app is excellent and lets you monitor your garden from your phone, anywhere. Great for security if you have a tool shed full of kit, but also a useful way to see if animals are coming into your garden at night, thanks to night vision and event recording. 

Alerts on your phone, when motion is detected, can be useful, but be sure to set this up so you don't get too many alerts and end up turning these off. You have to pay a subscription for longer-term storage, but this does apply to all Nest cams you own.

How to choose the best smart gardening gadgets

There are a few basics you'll need to think about before you decide which is the best smart gardening gadget for your property. These are laid out for you to work out the best option for your needs.

Do you enjoy gardening?
This is the most important question if you're not a fan of gardening, then automating everything is going to be in your best interests. From mowing and watering to weeding, you can get gadgets to do it all for you on smart schedules, so you're left to enjoy the results. 

But for those that enjoy gardening, it can be useful to look at more complimentary smart gardening tools like soil monitors or temperature alerts for greenhouses. Gadgets to help you monitor while still letting you do the work.

Do you have power?
If you don't have one of the best outdoor smart plugs for your garden, then you're going to want to keep power in mind. Even a battery-run robot lawn mower needs to go back to its mains-powered charging dock from time to time. 

While the best outdoor security cameras with batteries that can be charged indoors, most outdoor garden kits will need mains charging. So look at getting an external power socket installed before you start shelling out on a smart gardening kit.

Is your WiFi good enough?
Lots of smart gardening gadgets now connect to your WiFi, so you can control them from anywhere using your phone. But since they live in the garden, they may be out of range of your home WiFi - this is also something to consider when it comes to the best outdoor speakers, another popular item on the garden wishlist.

Take your phone outside and check this before investing. Is WiFi not good enough? Look into buying one of the best WiFi extenders to make sure you're set up and ready for your smart gardening gadget upgrades.