The 8 Best Indoor Smart Gardens for 2024
The best indoor smart garden for most people
Click & Grow Smart Garden 3
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The best smart gardens that double as furniture
Rise Mono Hydroponic Garden
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Whether you live in an apartment with no outdoor space or don’t have the time to tend a large outdoor garden, not everyone has the resources to grow plants the old-fashioned way. Luckily, indoor garden systems are a low-maintenance, affordable way to grow your own produce. From built-in LED lights to soilless hydroponic systems, the best indoor gardens can grow herbs, fresh lettuce, and even your own seeds for garden-to-table cooking. In addition, they are a great gift Let the plant lover in your life keep their gardening skills up all year long.
Many indoor garden systems include Sky Garden Bounty Elite and Click & Grow Smart Garden 3 Very user friendly. Plus, most models are small, lightweight and can be moved around the house. The larger indoor garden units – Lettuce Grow Farmstand and RiseGarden – take up more space but can accommodate up to 36 plants at a time. You’ll also find options for special indoor gardens that grow microgreens, as well as others that emphasize style and simplicity over complex mechanisms and mobile app integration. Many garden system options even come with seeds.
To find the best smart gardens of 2024, we put several indoor growing systems to the test.
The Best Indoor Smart Gardens of 2024
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I’ve tried this unit and it’s a perfectly sized smart garden for growing basic herbs like basil, mint, chives and salad greens. It couldn’t be easier to operate, with individual seed pods, LED grow lights, and a water tank that only needs to be filled every two to three weeks. This is a perfect introductory herb garden for those who don’t know much about green thumbs.
This Click & Grow Smart Garden 3 comes with three basil pods, but you can purchase any number of salad green, fruit, and vegetable seed pods from the website for about $3 each. This particular garden only has three plants and is a bit small for growing vegetables, so it’s best to stick to herbs and lettuce. There are a lot of flower podsHowever, if your gardening goals are more aesthetically pleasing.
There are several larger Click & Grow models, all of which function the same. These include Smart Garden 9holds nine seed pods, and multiple layers Smart Garden 27 You guessed it, there are 27 seed pods inside.
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The AeroGarden Bounty Elite Artisan is a relatively compact indoor gardening system that can make room for your choice of nine plants right out of the box—the selection ranges from herb mixes to tomatoes, peppers, and flowers.
As the plants grow, the adjustable LED light stand can grow with it, reaching a height of up to 24 inches. Includes plant food as well as an optional trellising system designed to accommodate tomatoes and other plants that need support as they grow.
I’m in the early stages of growing nine lavender plants, but so far the AeroGarden has made the process very easy. Instructions clearly guide you through the initial setup, and the display reminds you when you need to add more plant-based food.
The Click & Grow system has a reservoir that draws water into the soil pods, while the AeroGarden uses a pump to circulate the water. Fortunately, the pump sounds like a gentle dripping sound rather than any distracting sound.
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A nutritionist may tell you microgreens is a severely underutilized source of nutrition. Bonus: they’re easy to grow at home. Ingarden is a new stylish smart garden designed to do just that, and is compact enough to fit on a windowsill or bookshelf.
The English Garden is completely soilless, but uses capillary action to transport water to three seed pads located above a reservoir. The LED grow light under the handle runs on a timer to keep the microgreens growing, and they grow fast. In a few days you’ll have sprouts, and in a week or so you’ll have fully grown microgreens like mustard, radishes, and broccoli for sprinkling on salads and sandwiches, and in sauces and soups.
My favorite thing about the Ingarden is its simple yet stylish design, made only from ceramic and metal, no plastic. Compact, clean and easy to use, it’s the perfect smart garden for anyone trying their hand at indoor gardening.
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The Smart Grow House is one of the more basic indoor gardens on this list, but we love its stylish brass look. It doesn’t hold seed pods or self-water like some other plants, so you have to manage that part yourself, but it has full-spectrum LED lights that can run on a timer for optimal growth. This means you can display your garden anywhere in the house, not just near a window.
Granted, $230 is pricey considering how low-tech this indoor garden is. But if a classic copper finish enhances your theme, it might be worth spending the extra money.
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If you’re looking for a stylish indoor garden that can easily fit into your living space, the Rise Single Smart Hydroponic Garden is a great choice. This self-watering garden is entirely hydroponic, which means there are no soil pods to deal with. It comes with a 5-gallon water tank and LED grow lights, all of which are controlled and monitored via an integrated mobile app. There are built-in sensors for water levels, light settings, and nutrient levels that report information to keep things running.
A single smart garden can grow up to 36 plants, and you can add tiers to increase bud capacity for a steady supply of fresh herbs, vegetables, flowers and even tomatoes. Sprouted seedlings come in packs of four for $12.
In my opinion, what really sets the Rise apart from other pieces of furniture is the sturdy heavy-duty steel and solid wood design that makes it look very much like a modern piece of furniture. The Rise Garden can be placed behind a sofa or against a wall as a chic bookshelf or coffee table as well as a garden.
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I have personally used this indoor/outdoor farm stand and can tell you that it is well designed and easy to operate. Lettuce farms work by pumping water mixed with nutrients up from the bottom and flowing it through seed pods jammed into the walls. I tested it indoors for a few weeks No While some buds are growing well, many are dead. The emergence of LED ring lights has brought about huge changes. (I actually had to use less grow lights because the plants were growing so fast.) Both the water pump and the LED light ring run on timers, so they require little to no weekly maintenance.
It’s worth mentioning that the watering system makes a moderate noise (similar to a Zen fountain) for about 15 minutes every few hours. It was a bit stimulating at first, but I quickly got used to it and now I find it very relaxing. Once filled with water, the frame is also heavy, so it should not be moved frequently. It’s also bulky, but when the greenery starts blooming, it adds tons of life and ambience to any room. That said, it might still not be great for a small house or apartment.
The small indoor farm stand starts at $873 for 18 buds, but you can add tiers and increase the capacity to up to 36 buds. The base optional ring light is $200 Two-ring packaging Each additional ring is $100. Including starter seedlings, it is recommended that you replace them every few months.
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This little guy is designed for microgreens and is perfect for garnishing soups, salads, and other fancy recipes. It’s always nice to have a splash of green on your kitchen counters, and this gadget doesn’t take up much space at all. Microgreen garden kits include pots, soil and seeds for your first round of plants, all for less than $30.
Unlike the Ingarden, this model doesn’t have an LED light, so you’ll have to leave it in direct sunlight most of the time.
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This is another hydroponic garden option, but is obviously better suited for small spaces. The Gardyn upright growing system can accommodate up to 30 plants but takes up only 2 square feet. Individual sprouts are watered via a water tank and a water pump that circulates water on a timer. Built-in LED lights (also on timers) trigger sweet photosynthesis. The Gardyn system monitors itself via sensors and actual cameras, so you don’t have to do a ton of work other than cleaning and refilling the tank every month or so.
While it does come with a hefty price tag—$849, plus buds—the Gardyn is incredibly efficient. Just ask CNET’s Bridget Carey, who recently took a long test drive in her Gardyn and successfully grew herbs, tomatoes and plenty of salad greens. read her Gardyn Smart Hydroponic Indoor Garden Full Review Giving you all the information you might want to know.
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