This Augmented Reality App Will Make Garden Planning Easy

01/09/19 - Imagine seeing how a plant looks in your garden before purchasing it. Along with that, envision information about your garden living in an electronic cloud, rather than in a faithful garden notebook. This will soon be possible, thanks to the release of a new product and app.

Growing young maize seedling in a mobile smartphone on hand with modern agriculture digital technology concepts Image courtesy of Getty Images

Earlier this week, the Connected Garden Super Sensor was revealed at the annual Consumer Electronics Show. This techy product takes smart gardening to a whole new level—let’s dig into how it works.

You begin by putting the product’s sensor into the soil your garden. The sensor, which works in tandem with an app on your phone, will detect information about that spot in your garden—sunlight exposure, soil moisture, and pH are a few details it'll pick up.

From there, the synced app suggests plants that will thrive in the space where you put your sensor. Colored pins will be dropped at certain points in your garden: Each pin will indicate where your garden needs attention, i.e. the pH is too high or the soil is soggy. The darker the pin color, the more pressing the issue is and the faster you should fix it.

The coolest part about the device and the app? It provides an augmented reality view of your garden. On the app, use your phone camera to look at your garden, and virtual suggested plants will hover on the screen so you can visualize which plants look best and decide where to put them.

Augmented reality has been a huge plug for big-name company apps lately (like Target and Amazon) so that consumers can physically see furniture and decor in their space before buying. Connected Garden is the same idea, but is meant for outdoor spaces instead of inside homes.

There’s no release date or price for the Connected Garden Super Sensor yet, but the company is predicting that it'll be available for purchase at the end of 2019. The company is also aiming to keep the sensor under $100 while maintaining a $5/month fee for the associated app.