Bringing Life into Your Home with Smart Indoor Gardens

What Is a Smart Indoor Garden?

A smart indoor garden is a technologically enhanced collection of houseplants and greenery. It's a connected ecosystem that can comprise sensors, lighting, irrigation, and nutrient delivery. With smart tech, plants can thrive with minimal homeowner input.

Some gardeners already use tech, such as automated sprinklers, to take care of plants in outdoor spaces. A smart indoor garden works similarly. However, being indoors can make it easier to create a controlled environment. 

A smart garden system monitors moisture levels, water flow, light spectrum, and nutrient levels. It then uses this information to make adjustments. The most sophisticated set-ups connect to smart home ecosystems. For example, if a temperature sensor detects that the room is too warm for plants, it will send a trigger to turn the heating off.

A smart indoor garden can consist of many elements and plant varieties, which together can have positive effects on a homeowner’s wellbeing.

The Wellbeing Benefits of Smart Indoor Gardens

Gardening can have health benefits for the body and mind. While smart indoor gardens require little physical maintenance, and therefore minimal exercise, they can still boost your wellbeing.

For example:

Emotional & Cognitive Benefits

• Studies have suggested that indoor plants can reduce stress and anxiety.
• It’s thought that having real plants around can improve concentration and productivity. For example, one study found that those working in an office with plants had more attention capacity.
• Greenery can mask unsightly interiors, soften harsh architectural lines, and provide visual comfort. Liking your surroundings can put you in a better mood.
• Indoor plants can enhance seasonal wellbeing, especially in the winter months. A smart indoor garden lets you bring the outside in, whatever the weather or season.

Physical Benefits

• Plants improve indoor air through natural filtration.
• Indoor gardens will increase humidity in dry climates.

Design Benefits

• You can use indoor greenery to create a living artwork or talking point.
• Plants can add a sense of luxury to your home, partly because of their organic texture.
• You can customise a garden to suit any interior style, whether you’re a minimalist or a maximalist.
• Large plants and vertical walls can improve room acoustics and dampen sounds.

Smart indoor gardens can form an important part of a wellness-driven home that works well for its occupants. Whether you use smart tech to create large-scale hydroponic walls or smaller automated herb gardens, it can have positive effects.

Hydroponic Walls: Vertical Greenery with Automated Care

A hydroponic wall is a type of soil-free living wall, which is a vertical garden. 

You can use living walls to cover an outdoor or indoor wall with greenery. As hydroponic walls are soil-free, they're lighter and cleaner, which makes them a better option for smart indoor gardens. You can even use them to provide high-density plant growth in small spaces, such as apartments.

An efficient hydroponic wall system can automatically manage:

1. LED grow lighting – Sensors can analyse plants’ growth cycles and connected LEDs can respond by providing the right amount of light. A smart system can also adjust lighting based on how much natural light the wall is receiving.
2. Water circulation – There’s no need to water a hydroponic wall. Instead, the system uses a reservoir and pumps to disperse water as needed. Sometimes, the watering is triggered by a timer.
3. Nutrient dosing – Sensors can analyse the electrical current, pH level, and temperature of water to identify nutrient levels. By connecting these sensors to smart pumps, the pump will add any necessary nutrients to the water solution.
4. Humidity levels – Sensors can detect whether the humidity in the room is offering optimum growing conditions for the wall. If it’s not, connected dehumidifiers can remove excess moisture in the air. Alternatively, humidifiers can add more moisture.

As hydroponic walls require various technical elements, professional installation is essential. A soil-free living wall needs correctly angled lighting, expert drainage design, sensor calibration, and integration with home controls to thrive.

Beyond Herbs: What a Smart Garden System Can Do

Technology has taken indoor plant-growing beyond countertop herb planters. While plug-and-play hydroponic gadgets can be a great start for growing all-year-round edibles, a smart herb garden elevates this to another level.

With a fully integrated smart indoor garden, you can have:

1. Multi-zone irrigation and moisture control – Smart feeders can provide the right water levels for each planter (or groups of planters).
2. Automated grow cycles tailored to each plant species – You can program your system to recognise plants’ needs. Some need more humidity than others, for example.
3. Adaptive lighting – With smart lighting, you can mimic natural light so that your plants experience an ideal amount of exposure. Full-spectrum, tunable, and daylight-balanced adaptive lighting will make the difference here.
4. App-based insights – A smart garden app can notify you of your plants’ growth and provide harvest reminders.
5. Integration with other smart tech – It’s important to connect your smart garden to wider home automation (e.g. lighting and temperature).

An effective smart herb garden should bring your countertop plants into an ecosystem that will help them grow to their potential.

Why Professional Integration Delivers a Better Smart Garden

Professional integrators should design and manage smart indoor gardens. While standalone smart devices have their uses, an indoor garden requires a connected (and often complicated) set-up to survive.

A CEDIA-certified professional can ensure that your smart garden system has:

• Correct electrical and lighting specifications for every device and every plant
• Accurate sensor placement for more reliable automation
• Proper water management and drainage
• Integration with wider smart home controls (e.g. heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting)

A professional set-up will also minimise the risk of damage from leaks, humidity imbalances, and poor DIY installation.

How to Get Started with a Smart Indoor Garden System

If you’re interested in creating a smart indoor garden:

1. Identify the areas in your home that will suit indoor greenery. Do you have the space to grow vegetables in your kitchen? Would you prefer to brighten up a hallway or staircase void? Or do you want to make your home office a more appealing environment to work in?
2. Decide what type of indoor garden features you’d like. Hydroponic walls, herb growers, and wellness-focused plant clusters need different surroundings and tech.
3. Consult a professional. A CEDIA-certified integrator can help with your lighting, humidity adjustments, plumbing considerations, and smart home integration requirements.
4. Create a long-term maintenance plan. To keep your smart garden healthy, consider seasonal growth patterns. You may need to seek some advice from a gardener or horticulturist for the best plant know-how. Speak to your installer about technology maintenance plans too.