This year’s gold medal-winning garden at the Chelsea Flower Show — Garden of the Future — presented an interesting paradox. As Sarah Langford wrote in these pages some weeks ago, the designers, Josh Parker and Matthew Butler, were keen to “encourage people to apply climate-smart techniques” to better cope with the more extreme weather that causes plants either to wilt or flower earlier, and pests and diseases to proliferate. But although the duo made use of solar-powered irrigation pumps, laser imaging (to look at climate stress on crop roots) and AI diagnostic tools (to predict disease), the Garden of the Future didn’t appear any more space age than the other show gardens.
Instead, here was an emphasis on locally sourced materials, naturalistic planting and climate-resilient vegetables including sweet potato, chickpea and millet. The idea was that in order to have a garden of the future that looks as great as the gardens of now, significant changes are needed. And many of those changes can be facilitated by technology.
Although Parker and Butler’s show garden focused primarily on innovations in food provision, the tech they used can help every gardener. Apps such as PlantSnap, PictureThis and LeafSnap have long advised on how to water and nurture. But AI, augmented reality and virtual reality are now being deployed in more and more gadgets, from rain and soil sensors and watering systems to robotic mowers.
Also at Chelsea, Tom Massey’s Avanade Intelligent Garden featured sensors that track everything from tree sap flow and growth rates to air quality and soil health: “Rather than watering on a timetable, plants are only watered when the soil moisture drops below a certain level,” Massey says. “[AI is] supposed to be interactive, showcasing new emerging technology and also saving resources.”
Rainpoint’s WiFi Automatic Watering System and Smart Solar Drip Irrigation and Gardena’s Smart Irrigation Control are just some of the products that use AI, along with data from sensors and weather forecasts. Computer science engineers from Texas A&M University have come up with a cost-effective irrigation system dubbed Eric, using commodity doorbell cameras to monitor and estimate rainfall. The Claber Wireless Rain Sensor can also halt watering from existing irrigation systems during rainfall.
Much of this vanguard of technologies has been developed for agriculture before trickling down to smaller-scale domestic growers. Take Ecorobotix and Naïo Technologies, which use cameras and AI to identify and remove weeds from crop fields; for domestic gardens, Tertill Weeding Robot, a solar-powered, autonomous device, is among those coming to market. The Landroid Robotic Mower (Worx) is guided by GPS and uses AI to distinguish between grass and other plants. For large gardens and estates, multispectral drones and satellite imagery are used to monitor tree canopy health and disease, connecting to apps including Plantix, Agremo and Taranis.
Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.
Diagnostic apps (such as PlantSnap) may eventually include pest detection, which could then be linked to smart traps, spray systems or alerts. If birds rather than bugs are the problem, there are laser scarecrows (less terrifying than they sound). The BirdGard Iberia Bird Laser Repeller and the Bird X Hand-Held Laser project green/red laser patterns across the garden.
One interesting technology that is also emerging — and a version of which could be coming to a garden near you in the not too distant future — is bee vectoring. Commercially reared bees provide targeted crop controls by delivering biological agents, such as beneficial fungi or bacteria, directly to plants. The most widely studied agent is Clonostachys rosea strain CR-7, a naturally occurring fungus that combats certain fungal pathogens such as Botrytis cinerea. “Bees are natural vectors,” says Dr John Sutton, a former professor at the University of Guelph and consultant founder of Bee Vectoring Technology Inc. “Using them to deliver beneficial microbes is simply giving them another job, one that aligns with their foraging instincts.”
Agriculture holds further clues to the potential of sensors: combined with drones, satellites, autonomous vehicles and weather stations, they can provide real-time analysis of soil and crop health, water needs, pest and disease detection, nutrient status, yield estimation and equipment performance.
While these technologies might help nurture existing plants, the plants themselves are changing too. Geneticists — including those at Intact Genomics, based in St Louis, Missouri, Daphne Preuss, food and agriculture entrepreneur and chief executive of Nataur LLC, and Weichang Yu at the Chinese University of Hong Kong — are applying mini-chromosome technology to enhance a plant’s traits without altering the genes. On the way are more drought-tolerant versions of much-loved species — such as lavender and pampas grass.
Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.
In a similar vein, garden trees are being bred to capture more carbon. In the UK, Carbon Plantations is enhancing the rapid growth and high carbon sequestration profile of paulownia; in the US, biotech company Living Carbon has genetically modified poplars to have enhanced photosynthetic capabilities. It claims the trees capture 27 per cent more CO₂ and have 53 per cent greater biomass than the control group.
As Nigel Dunnett, professor of planting design and vegetation technology at the University of Sheffield, said in a talk several years ago: “The future garden will be rich in sensory experience, but also in purpose — cooling cities, absorbing water, feeding insects, lifting the human spirit. The aesthetic will be wild, exuberant and richly seasonal.”
Still, despite all these advances, arguably the first and most important step to future-proofing a garden is the most low-tech: choosing drought-tolerant, adaptable and resilient plants. Start with Eryngium bourgatii (tolerates heat, drought, wind and poor soil), Arbutus unedo (a tough, Mediterranean plant suited for warm southern gardens) and Achillea millefolium (tolerates neglect, poor soils and withstands drought and heavy rain).
For biodiversity, rethink the monoculture of a lawn and introduce alternatives, such as a wild-flower mixes. The Woodland Trust highlights garden-friendly trees such as crab apple, osier willow, hazel and blackthorn as rapid growing, multifunctional and good for carbon sequestration and biodiversity.
It may be the time to embrace technology; but there is never a total replacement for getting your hands dirty.
“The Future of Gardens” (part of the FUTURES series), by Mark Lane (Melville House UK, £9.99)
Find out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram