There’s an app for everything these days – even for helping homeowners get the most out of their budding backyard gardens.
Who’s got two thumbs and none of them are green? Unfortunately, this guy. Turns out tending a garden isn’t as easy as just chucking a few plants in the ground and calling it a day.
According to my Google searches, becoming a successful gardener actually takes serious outdoor planning, intricate knowledge of what kind of care your plants need and the right set of tools for the job – who knew?
But who’s got the time (or the care) to crack open the gardening book and study up on what a ‘bird of paradise’ flower wants? Not me, but knock yourselves out if that’s your jam.
So, in an effort to help my new batch of market plants survive more than a month, I’ve been on the hunt for some of the best backyard apps in the business that will transform me from gamer to groundskeeper.
Here’s what I found:
Planter
When you type in “gardening apps” in the Apple store, Planter is guaranteed to be sitting in the top spot. Why? This garden planner app helps you arrange your veggie garden before your trowel even breaks dirt. Using its intuitive drag-and-drop interface, the app will tell you what plants work well next to each other on the lot (appearing as green) and which ones don’t (appearing as red).
Everything is also completely customisable to fit your backyard needs, allowing you to mess with the layout and even add your own plants onto its roster of 80 fruits and vegetables if your favourite isn’t featured.
PictureThis
Ever been out for a stroll and thought, “That plant would look pretty f*#king cool on my window sill”? Well, PitcureThis lets you whip out your phone and instantly catch its name just by taking a photo of the leaves. Thanks to its massive library of over 400,000 plants, the app boasts a 98 per cent accuracy rating – making it perfect for tracking down that exotic beauty to call your own.
SoilMapp
Using satellite imaging and ground data courtesy of the CSIRO, SoilMapp lets you get a grip on what plans would work best in the soil in your home, ensuring perfect planting and full blooms every time.
Just by putting in your location, Aussies can access soil data, including acidity (pH), soil carbon, available water storage and salinity to judge what they can and can’t take care of without a stupid amount of effort.
Garden Plan Pro
Similar to Planter, Garden Plan Pro is a one-stop shop for anyone looking to grow their own veggies, herbs or fruits. Simply plot your available plants and veggies into the system and start planning out the planting areas on the virtual grid. The app also comes with the added bonus of telling you when it’s time to cook up your plants by analysing local weather and dishing out optimum planting and harvesting dates.
Smartplant
Say you’ve got the garden all sorted – now what? Enter Smartplant, an app that not only helps identify plants but creates a “care calendar” for what’s in your garden. From here, Smartplant will dish out expert advice personalised to you, giving you all the info you need to help your plants thrive. You can even chat with the experts themselves for further tips and tricks.
iScape
Now, this one is pretty f#*king cool. iScape taps into AR technology, creating a digital representation of what a garden would look like in your backyard based on whatever photos you plug into the system. It’s skewed a bit more towards landscape design rather than garden layout, but IScape is a brilliant tool for anyone looking to transform a portion of their home into a plant-lovers paradise.
Smartdraw
If you’re planning a garden from scratch, Smartdraw is the way to go. Boasting an easy-to-use tool for drawing and mapping out your design, you can choose from either a blank garden or pre-designed layout to add plants, paths and features to in order to make your garden come to life.
If you get stumped, you can also swing by the live chat feature to get some advice from the team.
Garden Tags
Garden Tags is another app that comes in handy once the digging is done. As well as plant identification, Tag’s offers up growing advice and plant care instructions so you can log every plant’s progress and make sure it’s on the right track. Think of it as a tracker for all of your garden needs.
