Perfect helpers for green-fingered geeks
Enjoy your garden without having to do the gardening with these brilliant gadgets
SPRING seems to have sprung at long last and that means one thing – it’s time to get out into the garden and sort out the shambles winter has unhelpfully left behind.
There is, of course, a whole range of top tech to help you get on with the job – from apps with acres of advice, to hardware that can take the strain out of keeping your lawn in check.
Here are our top five gardening gadgets and apps for this spring.
HOZELOCK CLOUD CONTROLLER
(£134.99) NOBODY wants to waste time watering the plants when there’s sunshine to be enjoyed. That’s why the clever people at Hozelock have come up with the Cloud Controller to automate it all for you.
As long as you’ve got an irrigation system set up already (and if you have, it’s more than likely from Hozelock in the first place), you can use the Cloud Controller to schedule your watering using the intuitive app, so it even works while you’re away.
The app is linked to a weather monitoring service, which will alert you if the weather changes so you can update your schedule. You can even push a button to water your garden immediately if the weather turns unexpectedly warmer.
■ hozelock.com
OLLIVAN ORIGINAL XIAOMI
PLANT MONITOR (£19.99) STICK the Ollivan plant monitor, right, in your pots and it’ll keep an eye on your precious greenery and let you know if anything’s amiss. The device monitors temperature, sunlight, soil nutrients, and soil moisture, and guide towards better care for the plant it is keeping a watch over.
It’ll tell you if the conditions are right for the plant in the pot, and what you need to do to keep it healthy even warning you if moisture gets low.
It’s all controlled via an app, of course, which connects to the monitor via Bluetooth. ■ Available from amazon.co.uk
SMARTPLANT APP (iOS and Android, free with in-app purchases – subscription £3.99 monthly or £35.99 annually)
THIS app promises to take the strain out of achieving plant happiness.
All you need to do is add your plants to ‘your garden’ in the app – you can do this manually if you know what the plant is, or by uploading a pic so the SmartPlant experts can identify it for you. You can even use a barcode scanner in the Garden Centre to load your plants up before you even buy them.
You can also tell the app about the pests and diseases that affect your garden, giving the SmartPlant experts a full picture of what you’re dealing with. Then you just have to follow the advice on the included calendar to keep your garden in fine fettle – premium members can also chat to the exerts to solve specific problems. ■ smartplantapp.com
FLYMO 1200R ROBOTIC LAWN MOWER (£510 from Amazon).
I FIND it hard to believe that anyone actually enjoys mowing their lawn. And thankfully, these days you don’t have to. Flymo’s Robotic Lawnmower can take care of that for you, nipping around the lawn of its own accord to keep things in check, even up and down 25% slopes.
You need to install an unobtrusive guide wire around your lawn’s perimeter and any obstacles, lest the robo-mow ends up in the bushes by mistake. But once that’s done you can just sit back and enjoy the lush green of the finely manicured grass. And where do the trimmings go? Back into the soil as a natural fertiliser… genius. ■ flymo.com
GARDENERS’ WORLD APP
(iOS and Android, free with in-app purchases – subscription £2.49 monthly, £28.49 annually, £2.99 for a single issue)
THE bible of British gardening has gone digital these days, although the print version is obviously still available. Get the latest from a host of venerable experts in a simple digital format you can read on your phone or tablet – no need to wait for delivery, and you’ll be saving the trees, too.
■ gardenersworld.com