These High-Tech Garden Tools Will Do Your Yard Work for You

Whenever the weather permits, Britt Wood drinks his morning coffee on his patio, proudly watching his little guy mow his lawn. No, he doesn’t have a particularly diligent son. Mr. Wood, the CEO of the National Association of Landscape Professionals, recently purchased an autonomous robot that drives around his South Riding, Va., yard, quietly munching each blade of grass down to the ideal 2½-inch height.

“It makes life a little easier,” said Mr. Wood of the convenient, “pet-like” robot. “Once you get one of these, your lawn never looks better.”

If 2020 was the year that many grew dependent on their backyards as a safe outdoor refuge, then 2021 might be the year they figure out how to spend less time maintaining their go-to retreats. One appealing solution: Upgrade the way you nurture your corner of nature with techy new tools—from robots that cut down weeds to sprinkler systems that rejig their run time depending on impending weather.

Anything that lets Americans enjoy more stress-free hours outside is good news: 27% of homeowners overhauled their gardens in 2020 and 19% plan to tackle an outdoor improvement project in 2021, according to a December 2020 survey by tool manufacturer Craftsman.

Here, our guide to the gear that might leave your neighbours wondering how you’ve gotten your garden so trim and tidy.

Lawn Labourers

Set an autonomous electric mower like Husqvarna’s Automower to run overnight and you can sleep later the next day—and achieve a cleaner, greener cut than most push models can deliver. By giving grass a regular (even daily) trim instead of lobbing off a lot once weekly, robo mowers leave small clippings the soil can more easily reabsorb, said Frank Mariani, the owner of Mariani Landscaping in Lake Bluff, Ill. An app controls the mower’s schedule, sets trimming height and, once you install the included boundary wires around your property, pings you if the robot leaves your yard in the arms of a jealous thief. Depending on the model, the mowers can chug away for up to four hours per charge, and, like Roombas, drive themselves back to their doghouse-like charging stations to juice back up. With their sensors, robo mowers are also safer than most manual counterparts. “You could practically lay your baby in front of the mower and nothing would happen,” Mr. Mariani said. When choosing a mower, consider the square footage and incline of your yard. Many less-expensive, lower-powered models freeze up on hills to prevent toppling. And be warned: an automower won’t give your lawn stripes of just-mowed green. (From $1699, husqvarna.com)

Wise Waterers

Water your grass too little, and it will shrivel into straw. Too often, and you’ll weaken the roots while encouraging mould and bacteria to grow. “That’s where smart irrigation comes in,” said Mr. Wood, who explained that smart weather-and-moisture-sensing systems outperform traditional irrigation setups—and waste less water—when it comes to keeping your garden hydrated. The Rachio 3 smart irrigation system controller, for example, automatically adjusts your watering schedule to coming weather patterns in your area. Just replace your old sprinkler controller with Rachio’s using the wires from your existing setup, and use the companion app to set a watering schedule for your system’s eight or 16 zones (from approx. $300, rachio.com). For the most strategic watering schedule possible, pair the Rachio with Weatherflow’s new Tempest Weather System. Once you install the water bottle-sized personal weather station on a post or pole 6 feet off the ground, the device will provide a forecast via its companion app that beats the local news for accuracy. The Tempest app will even alert you to garden-wrecking weather events like frost and high winds. (approx. $420, weatherflow.com).

To avoid making the same deadly watering mistakes in your potted plants and container gardens, stick Ecowitt’s unobtrusive Soil Moisture Sensor with Digital LCD Display into the soil. The device measures root wetness to tell you via a delightful potted plant graphic on the display when it’s time to water ($40, www.ecowitt.com). Alternatively, opt for a pot that does the measuring for you. Just fill the Self-Watering Wet Pot’s outer glass reservoir with water, and your finicky forsythia will absorb only what it needs through the inner, terra-cotta pot walls (from around $44, store.moma.org).

Hedge Hairstylists

Heavy, roaring, gas-powered trimmers can seem more than mildly threatening. But new, electric variants are tame enough to let anyone become a serene topiary artist. “The [battery] tech is finally to a point where it really makes sense to use it,” said Mr. Wood of the quiet, cordless models that have recently hit the market. At only 5 pounds, Craftsman’s new V20 Cordless 2-In-1 Hedge Trimmer and Grass Shear Kit is lightweight enough to let you one-handedly hack at unruly bushes and overgrown flower beds ($80, lowes.com). Komok’s Cordless Electric Pruning Shears, meanwhile, use a carbon-steel blade and brushless motor to deftly cut through branches up to 1.2 inches thick ($296, amazon.com). The best part? Your neighbours won’t want to turn the hose on you for disturbing the peace all afternoon.

Weed Cutters

Sure, you could crouch in the dirt pulling weeds out by the root. Or, you could sic the turtle-like Tertill Garden Weeding Robot on them. Every day, the Tertill roams your plant beds, chopping the tops off emerging weeds before they suffocate your dahlias. With a rugged, weatherproof shell and top-mounted solar panel to power the device, it can stay in your garden all season long. Just remember to cage your seedlings. (approx. $450, tertill.com)

Flight Tracker

Feel like you take wildlife for granted? Try the Bird Buddy smart feeder to acquaint yourself with your local flying families. Using AI, an integrated camera and a companion phone app, the device counts up the variety of species who have come to nosh. “It’s like Pokémon Go for birds,” said co-founder Franci Zidar of the way the app turns attracting avian visitors into a game. Just add bird seed. (approx. $245, mybirdbuddy.com)

POSTAL ROOTS

Subscription services that deliver seeds, moss and more to your door

Moss of the Month

For forest-y vibes in a shady corner of your backyard or a shot of color in an austere rock garden, moss does nicely. Monthly deliveries from the forests of Arkansas give you the chance to decorate with spiky haircap, plush pillow and delicate fern mosses. (around $62 for three months, teresasplants.com)

My Garden Box

Gardening is about more than just the green stuff that comes out of the dirt. While it certainly delivers live plants, like Japanese painted ferns and Crotons, this subscription plan often includes interesting containers, soil and fertilizer, tools and accessories. (approx. $50 a month, mygardenbox.com)

Gardenuity

This quarterly box from container-gardening experts based in Dallas delivers healthy, rooted herbs and flowers, selected for your region and growing conditions. You’ll also get access to Gardenuity’s Grow Pro service, with on-call expert advice and weather alerts. (approx. 193, gardenuity.com)

Bloomin Bin

While most garden plans focus on spring and summer plots, Bloomin Bin gives you year-round, season-specific seeds and saplings in a quarterly box. Each one comes with detailed care instructions from a master gardener, and a choice of flowers or fruits/vegetables. (From $10, bloominbin.com)

Seed Bank Box

Each month, subscribers receive eight to 10 varieties of organic seeds of unusual herbs, edible flowers and vegetables along with info cards. The April box includes seeds for Thai Pink Egg Tomatoes, Carentan Leeks, and Red Fire Orach. (around $28 a month, seedbankbox.com)

—Matthew Kronsberg

BACK TO BASICS

Professional green thumbs on no-tech, time-honoured paths to perfecting your plot

Edwina von Gal

Landscape Designer, founder of the Perfect Earth Project

If you’re willing to mow higher and let your lawn look more relaxed and thicker, the grass will naturally out-compete weeds. We say that you grow to 4 inches, then cut to 3 inches. It should look tousled—like you want to flop into it.

Patricia Algara

Founding Principal of BASE Landscape Architecture

Any space, no matter the size, can be a bee-friendly, pollinator garden. Even on your balcony, a pot of flowers (bees love blue and purple) can provide them with food. Leave fresh water with stones or marbles so bees can drink without drowning.

Beronda Montgomery

Author of Lessons from Plants

Grow plants of the same height together, like purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans, or companion plants that require different, complementary nutrients. These types of pairings are beneficial because they limit biological competition for access to light or nutrients.

Dan Bifano

Master Rosarian

You don’t want to put roses where they don’t want to grow. As in real estate, it’s location, location, location. Planting in good, sandy, loamy soil that drains well (but not too well), in a sunny location with good air circulation is going to give you an exceptional rose garden.

Julie Hess

Senior Horticulturist, Missouri Botanical Garden

One of the best things you can do if your area has clay soil, besides add compost, is to add calcined clay-like Turface MVP. As counterintuitive as it sounds, it’ll even out moisture retention, improve drainage and reduce compaction.

–M. K.

You’re oh so busy. You’re on Slack and email and back-to-back Zoom calls , sometimes all at once . Are you actually getting real work done?

Cal Newport doesn’t think so.

“It’s like, wait a second, none of this mattered,” says the Georgetown University computer science professor and crusader for focus in a distracted age.

Newport, 41, says we can accomplish more by shedding the overload. He calls his solution “slow productivity”—and has a book by the same name —a way for high achievers to say yes to fewer things, do them better and even slack off in strategic doses. Top-notch quality is the goal, and frenetic activity the enemy.

This, he told me, is the thing that can save our jobs from AI and layoffs, and even make shareholders happy.

I had questions. Can we really be less is more at work, or have we grown addicted to constantly crossing endless tasks off our to-do lists? What will our bosses think?

After all, so many of us yearn for a burnout cure-all that will preserve our high-achiever status, and this isn’t the first you-can-have-it-all proposition we’ve heard. Champions of the four-day workweek promise we can ditch an entire workday just by working smarter. Remote-work die-hards swear it’s a win for employers and employees. Few dreams are more seductive than bidding goodbye to hustle culture, while still reaping the benefits of said hustle.

Newport acknowledges that saying no to preserve our productivity can be a delicate act. He knows that entrepreneurs have more flexibility, but says those of us who answer to managers can carve this out too. We might even find we have more power and value to our employers.

“You should take that value out for a little bit of a spin,” he suggests. He offers some pointers.

Less is more

The way we work now is a “serious economic drag,” Newport says. Knowledge workers have devolved into a form of productivity that’s more about the vibes—stressed!—than actually making money for the company. Data from Microsoft finds that lots of us spend the equivalent of two workdays a week on meetings and email alone.

One mistake we make, Newport says, is taking on too many projects, then getting bogged down in the administrative overload—talking about the work, coordinating with others—that each requires. Work becomes a string of planning meetings, waiting on someone from another department to give us a go-ahead.

Newport recommends giving priority to a couple projects, then bumping the others to a waiting list in order of importance. Make that list public, say, in a Google doc you share with bosses and colleagues.

“When workloads are obfuscated behind black boxes, it’s just people throwing stuff at each other, it’s very dangerous to say no,” Newport says.

If someone comes to you with more work, have them consider where it should go on your list, Newport says.

When you do say yes, double the estimated timelines you set to complete a project. That’s how long it’ll take to do it well, he says. And try what he calls a “one for you, one for me strategy.” Every time you book an hour-long meeting, block an hour for independent work on your calendar.

Be the one to trust

It’s a foreign and bracing approach for those of us who reflexively say yes to work requests. Newport’s philosophy requires transparency and confidence. Instead of “let me see how fast I can turn that around!”, try, “This request will take six hours. I’ll have that time in three weeks.”

This could be heresy at some companies. The trick is in the delivery, he says. Never make it seem like work tasks are a burden you shouldn’t have to face. Instead, stress that you’re trying to be as effective as you can for the team and the company. Be positive, and deliver on the timelines you promise. You’ll be seen as someone who’s organised and on top of your game.

We think bosses want someone who’s always accessible—fast to respond, fast to jump into action, Newport says. But what bosses really want is to know that a project they hand you will get done.

Bite-size shirking

Quiet quitting permanently is a bad idea, Newport says, but a little bit is good.

Don’t feel guilty, he adds. You’re working under a new, better system. We weren’t meant to work all out , every day, without seasonal shifts and pauses.

Pick a time—say, the month of July—to slow down. Don’t volunteer for extra work. Don’t offer Mondays as a possibility for meetings. Take on an easier project for cover.

He also recommends taking yourself out to a monthly movie during the workday. Say it’s a personal appointment, and enjoy the sense of control and creativity it brings.

You don’t have to nail a manifesto to the wall, he adds, or try to change the whole company culture. Instead, quietly carve out change for yourself.

Coming into your power

The catch: You have to be really good at the part of your job that matters. And you have to get big stuff done. Remember, this is about being a happier high performer, not slacking.

“There’s no hiding,” Newport says.

I suspect this terrifies a lot of people. They’ve gotten good at being always on and typing up yet another meeting agenda. Tackling a major project or goal is often harder, and comes without a guarantee that you’re going to nail it.

Scary or not, real work is becoming imperative. AI is coming for the rote parts of our jobs. Leaders are sussing out the “nonsense” projects and roles in their ranks as they cut jobs, Newport says. No boss wants to be left with a team of people who are aces at responding to emails.

Mastering a valuable skill puts you in control. Newport writes of people who leave corporate America behind and move where they want , working remotely as contractors, charging wild fees for fewer hours of work. The more you shed the work that doesn’t matter, and spend that time getting better at the stuff that does, the more leeway you’ll get.

“The marketplace doesn’t care about your personal interest in slowing down,” Newport writes. “If you want more control over your schedule, you need something to offer in return.”

Figure that puzzle out, and you might just be able to have it all—high achievement, and your sanity.