Make the Most of Your Garden With This Clever Tech
One of the best things about living in the UK is that as soon as the sun comes out, the country’s mood improves as everyone dashes outside to make the most of the quality weather. Why not enhance that enjoyment with some clever tech for the garden?
The year may have begun wet and miserable but that’s all been forgotten as we now enjoy some richly deserved summer sun. However, at this time of the year, when the risk of a heatwave is never far away, we run the risk of our lush overgrown gardens can turning into dry deserts in no time.
An automatic watering system can help with that, particularly if tied to a drip irrigation system: these drop tiny amounts of water where needed, so aren’t covered by hosepipe bans, unlike traditional sprinkler systems.
The Hozelock Cloud Controller lets you turn on water from anywhere, in addition to scheduling regular waterings, and connects to a standard hosepipe. If you’re an Apple user, the Eve Aqua is a little neater to use, and can be set to automatically skip a watering session if there’s rain predicted for your location.
The Eve Aqua does need a HomePod or Apple TV close-by if you intend to remote control your watering system.
For those with larger lawns, a robot lawn mower is the perfect way to keep grass in check. Tiny amounts of grass are cut off with each pass, mulching down into the ground to feed the lawn and keep it looking lush. The results can be incredible, giving you a lush lawn with very little work; and there are no cuttings to dispose of, either.
Complex gardens could do with something like the Husqvarna AutoMower 405X, which can handle rough terrain. This robot needs a guide wire to buried around your garden’s perimeter, to prevent it from running over plants and flowers that you don’t want to cut.
If you don’t want to have to lay cable, there’s a new breed of wire-free lawn mowers, such as the EcoFlow Blade, which has an optional lawn sweeping attachment that will pick up leaves, sticks and such automatically.
When it comes to cooking, why not get an electric BBQ, such as the Char-broil Smart-E? This large model makes it easy to cook for lots of people at once, has precise temperature control and will work with a cast iron smoker box and wood chips if you want that authentic BBQ flavour. And it can self-clean, heating itself to 370°C to burn off food residue.
Outdoor lighting should not be ignored, and there are plenty of smart options, controlled via a smartphone. Philips Hue has a wide-range of outdoor lights, varying from colour-changing light strips to spotlights you can stake into the ground. They are an excellent choice if you have Hue lights around your house.
For something a bit different, why not get the Twinkly Festoon lights? These colour-changing string lights can be set to an array of motion patterns, giving your garden that extra glam that it deserves.
