There are few areas of our lives that technology hasn’t touched. Not even nature has escaped the march of progress, with high-tech ways to monitor and maintain our gardens.
Smart garden tech is a growing industry, but it isn’t for everyone. The obvious reason to skip the smart garden tech is the cost. If you are paying out for smart lighting on top of your robot lawnmower and moisture sensors, things can quickly add up. However, over time, that cost may be offset by the time and energy you save.
And then there is the effect of the work itself. Maybe you are the kind of person who finds mowing the lawn therapeutic rather than tedious. To borrow a phrase from Father Ted, maybe you like the misery. But for the rest of us, anything that can help us keep on top of the outdoor chores is a bonus rather than something to be viewed with suspicion.
If you have decided to jump in, there are a few obvious places to start.
RM Block
Smart watering systems
Irrigation systems take the guesswork out of looking after your plants. Many a plant has been lost to an unexpected burst of good weather that dries out the soil and withers away any growth.
It doesn’t have to be massively complicated. The Eve Aqua smart water controller (€150) will turn your outdoor tap into a tech-enabled smart system.
You can either set your own watering schedule through the accompanying app or let the system take control and automatically water the plants for you. And you can also manually control the system – in person – with the button control.
It links in with controllers such as the HomePod mini or the new Apple TV, and you can use Siri to control it with voice commands.
This may not be suitable for use when you are in an area that has been slapped with a water-conservation notice, but since this is Ireland and such things are a relatively rare occurrence, you could future-proof your garden.
Obviously, be mindful to adhere to any hosepipe bans in place due to water shortages.
You will need a decent internet connection to take advantage of some of these smart features, but with the spread of Thread enabled devices, which bring a mesh network that strengthens your home’s internet coverage, that is an easier task than it used to be.
Gardena’s smart watering system brings moisture sensors into the mix. The sensors can be bought as part of a smart irrigation set (€250) to keep an eye on the water content of the soil and send the data back to the app so the smart water control can decide where to concentrate its efforts.
Robot mowers
While some of us would love to hand the lawn over to nature, in reality it is not always practical. But mowing the lawn is time consuming and – for most us – boring. This is one area where the robots can take the lead, with a range of automatic mowers that can deal with your grass while you sip a cool drink in the sun.
A few years ago, a robot lawnmower was a rare and expensive sight, reserved only for those with notions, or a garden so large that it would need an army of staff to maintain it. Now there are robots that are designed to look after lawns of all sizes.
There are a few caveats. As with robot cleaners, it is best to make sure their path is relatively unobstructed. That means taking smaller toys off the area to be mowed, making sure there aren’t any surprise obstacles – rocks or large twigs – in its path that might evade the sensors but clog up the blades, and remove blankets and anything else that you don’t want chewed up by the mower.
If you have a particularly sharp slope on the garden, the mower may also struggle.
The well-established brand here is Husqvarna, which has added machines that use virtual boundary wires to its line-up. The Automower 308v (€1,500) covers areas up to 800sq m and uses AI and satellite navigation to determine where it needs to mow. It will need wifi coverage, though, so you may need to boost your signal. Larger lawns will need more firepower, such as the Automower310E NERA (€1,800), which deals with lawns of up to 1000sq m and also has an edge-cutting function.
The newest entrant to the Irish market is Roborock, which has branched out from home cleaners to mowers. The all-wheel-drive RockMow Z1 has a few options, including the Lidar enabled Z120. You create a virtual map of your garden and the RockMow will follow the boundaries, avoiding toys, skirting potholes and pausing when it detects people nearby.
If you want something more budget friendly, Homebot Ireland’s Buddy (€849) uses cameras to determine the edges of your lawn, the location of flower beds and other potential obstructions. You need a decent, well-defined boundary to make sure that the mower doesn’t head off into the sunset, and if you have a path cutting through your lawn, Buddy will have to be manually repositioned. It has a swappable battery, so you don’t have to wait for it to recharge.
Smart lighting
If you are trying to create the perfect outdoor space, you should also plan for using it when the sun goes down. That is where good outdoor lighting comes into its own.
Philips Hue has a range of outdoor lighting, from the colour-changing Impress LED path light (€223) that can link in with outdoor motion sensors to light your way home, to the Hue LED globe fairy lights (€238) that are IP65 rated and can be controlled from your phone. Get the right colour scheme and you can set the mood for whatever your gathering is, from a relaxed night with friends to a more high-energy party.
Another option is Govee, which has more cost-effective options that include path lighting (€94) and neon rope lights (€150) for your outdoor space. You can also install permanent outdoor lights (€250) that can be programmed for different times of year – from Christmas displays to Halloween.
Animal watching
All that smart technology could free you up for some leisure time and, if you are so inclined, you could take up a bit of birdwatching. There are smart nesting boxes that integrate cameras so you can watch from afar as your bird tenants grow, but it is a little late in the year to be hoping for eggs to watch. Smart bird feeders might keep you going for the rest of the year. The Birdfy Smart Feeder comes with a built-in camera that records the comings and goings, and alerts you when there is activity on your feeder.
It has a 2K camera that will record to cloud storage so you can catch up on any bird activity you missed and share it with friends, family or the wider birdwatching community at large. The solar panel kit eliminates the need to remove the feeder regularly to charge the camera.
And while we may have missed the boat on bird nesting boxes this year, experts recommend putting them into your garden in autumn or winter, giving birds time to spot the box and decide to set up home.
You can watch the birds without disturbing the nests, streaming footage to your phone from the built-in camera. Among the options are the Birdfy Smart Birdhouse (€165) which is powered with a solar panel, or the Nestera Bird Box Camera Wifi system (€220), which has a built-in camera and microphone.
