Connected controllers, BBQ gadgets, smart mowers, weather stations and more
Your garden will eat up as much time as you’re prepared to give it. Maintaining a vegetable patch or a flower garden, or turning that pile of bricks and planks into a shed or outdoors BBQ: it all takes time.
Smart garden tech can save you time, make your garden look more striking, or just let you have more fun while you’re out there.
Smart sprinklers, outdoor lights that offer millions of color shades and lawnmowers that maintain your grass just like a smart vacuum does for your floors, they’re all just as useful as the tech we use indoors.
Here are some of our favorite smart garden devices.
Best smart outdoor lighting
Philips Hue Lily White & Colour Ambiance LED Smart Double Pack & Lily XL
Packages from £215 | Amazon
Philips offers an extensive range of Hue outdoors lights but the Lily kit with a Lily XL extension light is a great place to start, one guaranteed to add visual impact to your garden.
You treat them much like other Philips Hue lights. They are controlled using your phone via the Hue app and a Hue bridge, and can output colour or white light in the shade you choose.
Much easier to place than some, you can use either the supplied plastic stake rammed into your lawn, or the more conventional mount.
The standard Lily fixtures area rated at 600 lumens, the Lily XL at 1050 lumens. They chain together using 5m cables, making the system modular and easy to change or add to.
However, you just have to make sure the power-supplying “base unit” has enough juice. Hue makes both 40W and 100W versions, and we’d recommend the latter if you’re likely to want more than 2/3 lights.
A Lily needs an 8-watt supply, the Lily XL 15 watts. The 40W would be close to maxed-out with just two standard power Lily lights and a Lily XL.
All three are water resistant to IP44, which is good enough for rain. Just don’t try to power-wash these lights.
Best outdoor smart power plug
Meross MSS620
£25 | Amazon
The Meross MSS620 is a weatherproof smart outdoors plug that lets you schedule power to each of the sockets and, unlike some, control each of the sockets independently.
There are two versions of this tough little enclosure. One supports Google Assistant, Samsung SmartThings and Amazon Alexa. The other supports Apple HomeKit.
Shop carefully based on whether you’re an Apple or Android household.
The Meross MSS620 is an IP44 rated enclosure, ready for rain but not immersion in water or strong jets of the stuff. It’s also important to take into account the limits of these smart plugs, which often aren’t entirely clear.
Their waterproofing only stands while the seals are in place, not when something is plugged in. For continuous outdoors use you’ll also need something like a Dri-box and proper weatherproof outdoors plug enclosure.
Best smart sprinkler controllers
Rachio 3
From $140, Amazon | rachio.com
Rachio’s smart sprinkler controllers are a class above the (growing) competition. Simple to use, easy to install, with an excellent app that keeps you informed on what it’s doing so you really don’t have to do anything – this is smart home tech at its best.
A Rachio 3 replaces your existing irrigation clock and controls your in-ground sprinklers. Instead of instead of having to program your schedule on a tiny, confusing screen or with a dial, you can do it on a smartphone or let Rachio create a schedule for you (there’s also a web interface).
Rachio uses hyperlocal internet weather sources to determine when to water your garden based on the weather. During setup you tell it what type of vegetation and landscape is in each zone, and it will also adapt its watering to those – so grass will get more frequent, shallower watering, whereas shrubs and trees have deeper, less frequent applications. This combination should result in a healthier landscape while using less water.
Rachio is like a smart thermostat for your sprinkler system. It intelligently adapts to the weather, sets up a schedule for you and may save you money while keeping your yard healthy.
Integration with every smart home ecosystem (yes, even HomeKit) give you lots of options for working your sprinklers into your smart home.
It is expensive though, and there are only limited options for controlling your sprinklers directly on the device, leaving you out of luck if the internet is down. But if you’re looking for a smart way to control your in-ground sprinklers, this is the gold standard.
Best smart padlock
Master Lock Biometric Padlock
£129 | masterlock.com
Some might say a biometric lock for the garage is a solution to a non-existent problem. But they probably haven’t spent two hours looking for a key that clearly isn’t where they left it.
The Master Lock Biometric Padlock works much like the fingerprint scanners of Android phones. You press finger or thumb to the pad to teach the lock your print. Come back later and you can unlock it with that same digit.
This lock can hold up to 10 prints in its memory, giving the whole family access.
This happens inside the lock itself, with no need to connect it to a wider platform or phone. However, that also means its smarts are limited. Unlike smart locks, you can’t unlock the Master Lock Biometric Padlock with a phone app.
The CR2 battery lasts a year and there’s a backup input code, which you may need to use if it’s wet out due to the tech used in the finger pad.
Read our Master Lock Biometric Padlock review for more info.
Best pizza oven
Ooni Karu 12
£370 | Amazon
It might be a stretch to call the Ooni Karu 12 a piece of smart tech but it is one of the more fun-to-use garden gadgets.
This little oven gets hot enough to cook pizzas in the traditional Neapolitan style, at temperatures up to 500 degrees centigrade.
All of Ooni’s outdoor pizza ovens offer this — heat far greater than your indoors oven — but the Karu is the most flexible of the lot.
It’s a multi-fuel pizza oven. You can cook with wood, charcoal or gas, if you buy Ooni’s gas burner.
An Ooni Karu lets you use gas at times when you don’t want to be stuck tending to the fire, and wood when you don’t need to socialise with guests.
The gas-based Ooni Koda and wood pellet Omni Fyra don’t offer that kind of versatility — although both are great in their own right.
Best weather station
Netatmo Weather Station
£135, Amazon | netatmo.com
Say hello to the 21st century’s take on home meteorology. The Netatmo Weather Station’s goal is to tell you everything you could possibly know about your home and garden microclimates.
There are units for both indoors and outdoors, which report back to your phone on variables like temperature, pressure, humidity, CO2 levels, noise pollution and even the likes of wind and precipitation fineries if you pick up the right add-ons.
The software then analyses all that data, presents you with pretty graphs and gives you real-time accounts; plus all the environmental trends a gardener could need to figure out what to plant, when to plant it and how to best take care of them all.
You can also buy a whole bunch of additional sensors, like a rain or wind gauge, to add even more data.
Best indoor garden
Click and Grow
£90, Amazon | clickandgrow.com
The Click and Grow Smart Garden 3 is the most affordable way to have your very own garden indoors.
All you have to do is insert the plant capsules, fill up the water tank and plug it in. And that’s pretty much it. The company says its developed a ‘Smart Soil’ that works in tandem with built-in sensors to make sure your plants get the optimal configuration of water, oxygen and nutrients.
You can also track the growth with a companion app and set reminders to refill the water tank – which you don’t have to do for a whole month. The LED light stand is also adjustable to match plant growth
There are refillable seed packets you can buy for an extra $50 once your current batch is too big.
You also get nine packs that will last you a whole year so we’re not complaining about spending the extra coin.
Best BBQ accessory
Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub
[currency usd=”140″ gbp=”157.49″ | Amazon
The Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub has two reasons to exist.
It can either let you be much more sociable at BBQs… or, if getting away from people is the reason you picked up those tongs in the first place, it’ll make you seem like a master smoker even if you can barely cook a chicken nugget.
This is a smart meat thermometer. You poke a probe into the chicken breast, steak or brisket, tell the app what you plan to cook and the Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub connects to your phone, telling you when to give it a flip and when it will be done.
You get two probes in the box, although a single-probe version is also available. One monitors the meat, the other the temperature inside the grill. The Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub takes up to four probes, which can be bought separately, for brainpower-free multi-tasking.
Costs add up if you want to do this and the app could do with more recipes, but if you want to make those precious BBQ days count it might be worth it.
Best smart lawnmower
Husqvarna Automower 450X
[currency usd=”4,099″ gbp=”3,999″ |husqvarna.com
Let’s start with the biggie – the price tag. Sure, at [currency usd=”4,099″ gbp=”3,999″ it isn’t exactly cheap but the Automower range is the ultimate in smart garden tech luxury.
Imagine not having to mow your lawn ever again – anyone with even a small patch of grass will tell you what a ball-ache mowing can be, especially in the summer where bi-weekly trims are often required.
There’s nothing back breaking at all about pushing a button on a smartphone or Apple Watch app and letting a robot mower do the hard work. It’s not perfect – it occasionally gets stuck around objects like stepping stones and you still might need a strimmer for getting to those hard to reach edges – but the 450X will save you hours and hours walking around pushing a lawnmower.
You’ll need to get someone in to install the hidden wire that keeps the Automower on track, and you’ll need an outside power point for the charging station, but that’s about it for the hassle stakes.
Read our full Husqvarna Automower 450X review.