Best Software and Apps for Watching Over Your Plants

Gardening teaches us how to deal with one of the most pressing questions of all times – How much is enough? All gardeners out there try to find out how much water, sunlight, humidity and care are enough for each type of plant. And while each one of them is different, those who watch over a bunch of plants know that they all have a little something in common.

Taking care of a garden or even just a few plants in your house doesn’t just turn into a nice hobby to fill your free time with. It’s much more than that – it changes the way you are and behave in a society, because it has a huge impact on your way of thinking. It’s also great for kids to learn how to take care of plants, because they’ll grow up to be more responsible, caring and organized.
But enough talking; let’s get to action and find out what some of the best ways to take care of your plants are. This article will present you with the apps and tools that we appreciate the most and find extremely useful for gardening purposes. However, our lists are open, as always, so you’re more than welcome to add some more applications to the article by leaving a comment.

Kew Gardens

Kew Gardens is a free app that works on both Android and iOS devices, being suitable for smartphones, as well as tablets. By using a QR code scanner, the tool lets everyone access very detailed profiles on each plant they own or are planning to buy. This one will include photos, videos, as well as many details about the way you need to take care of them.


Being an app created by the Royal Botanical Garden, it actually comes with details about the plants owned by the garden. It is great for those planning to visit it, but it can also be helpful for gardeners looking for inspiration, as it shows what looks best in their gardens at the moment.
This way, you can see what some of the loveliest plants are and how difficult it is to take care of them. Whenever you decide to purchase one of the flowers, you’ll know what climate it survives in and which one doesn’t suit it. You’ll be able to install this one on iOS 5.1 and Android v2.2.

Garden Manager: Plant Alarm

As the name clearly states it, this is a must-have app for those owning more than just one or two plants. It allows you to keep track of each plant’s progress and even share the details via social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Besides, you’ll also be able to set alarms and notifications so that you’ll never forget when you need to water each flower.
However, the alarms are not just for that, as they can also remind you of fertilization times, when you need to spray pesticides on a plant, etc. To remember what plant your notification is talking about, you can log photos of each one of them and create mini-profiles, since the name may sometimes not be enough. Especially if you own a really big garden!
You can download this app for free from Google Play, and it suits most smartphones, as well as tablets. It only requires v2.3 or later of Android, and it comes with a few in-app products that you may want to consider buying. However, they won’t cost more than $2.38 per item, and you can find out more about them here.

A Plant’s Life

While this one may not be an obviously helpful app, it does quite a lot for those who love plants. A Plant’s Life is actually an iOS-only game that is also pretty addictive. It’s great for beginners in terms of gardening, as well as it is for children who want to learn more about plants.
By showing everyone how plants live, what their needs are and requiring users to spray the right pesticides, they will get ready to watch over flowers in real life. This can be a great family app for those who have a nice garden and want their kids to get familiar with gardening. Being pretty realistic, the game will force players to water, fertilize and take care of the plants to prevent them from dying.
You can get it for free or iPads and iPhone running on iOS version 4.3 or a newer one. The app comes in English only and more mobile version of it are about to come soon for those using a different kind of operating system. In the meantime, though, you can check out the game right here!

Into Gardens

Delivering content from some of the world’s best gardeners, as well as some designers, the app serves as an amazing source of inspiration. Into Gardens is a great mix of a magazine and a tool providing TV series to its users. Being entirely free to install, it can be used on iPads, as well as iPhones and most Android devices.
Apart from video content, though, the tool also delivers many articles written by specialists and great photos of plants. It familiarizes its viewers with different views on gardening, approaches that you might have not thought of and many more.
All this comes from its founder – James Alexander-Sinclair who said that the aim of the app was to, “be flippantly authoritative.” You can find out more about it from the website, and you’ll be able to download it on your mobile device if you’re using iOS v5.0 or version 2.2 of Android.

Garden Squared

If you tend to plant vegetables more than flowers, than Garden Squared will be an amazing app for you to use. It helps you plan out everything that you’re planning to plant by using realistic dimensions. These ones vary from 1-by-1 square foot plots to some a lot bigger (i.e.: 4-by-8).
By having all your gardened logged onto the tool, you can easily track the growth and development of each vegetable. You can also save your personalized designed for later use and get inspired and creative while playing with Garden Squared. Apart from this, it’s a free tool, and you can install it on your Android phone by using this link.

Vegetable Garden

Still focusing on vegetables, another cool app that could be use dis called Vegetable Garden. This one acts as a guide that includes details for over 50 different types of vegetables. You can look them up by name or simply browse through the categories to find the ones you’re interested in.
Once you have found a plant you want to learn more about, you can click on its name and see how to grow it. The details include photos and sometimes videos while the price is as low as $1.06 you can download this one from Google Play for version equal to or higher than 2.1 of Android.

Garden Design Ideas

Those of you who care a lot about the design of their gardens will love an app like this one Garden Design Ideas is actually a pretty huge database including pictures of gardens from all over the world. It will inspire you and also teach you how to make your garden look pretty without affecting the way your plants grow.
It’s a great helper in terms of showing users how to watch over their plants, because it specifies exactly what designs are good for your plants and which ones can damage them. You can get it for free on Android 4.0 smartphones, as well as most tablets and learn more about the simple, modern, waterfall, balcony and terrace gardens right now.

Gardenate

Last but not least on our list is Gardenate. This one is a very detailed app that provides its users with information about flowers, but also herbs and vegetables. No matter if you only have a few plants or a large garden in the backyards, this tool will give you access to a database of plants with a great deal of information.
Apart from this data, it also lets you add your own notes and customize the profile of a plant. You can easily upload pictures and write about the best methods you have used to grow your plants. These ones will become visible throughout the app and everyone else will access the information.
By making this data available, you will also help yourself remember some of the techniques you used and important information about the plants, but will also help other users. With Gardenate, basically everyone is helping each other via the app that creates a community of gardeners. You can get it for $0.99 or iOS and $1.99 on Android while you’ll be able to learn a lot more about it here.