Watering advice in your pocket

Every summer, Australian gardeners want to maintain a healthy garden using as little water as possible, so the ‘SmartGardens’ app was developed to help design a watering schedule and send reminders direct to the phone.

Designed by Dr Jon Pearce from the Department of Information Systems with Dr Adrian Pearce from Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Melbourne, the free app provides information to gardeners in Melbourne and Geelong, and is now available from iTunes.

“Gardeners are now very aware of growing lush gardens using the least amount of water possible, so we have developed an app to let you know how often to water and the duration of watering for your particular location and garden type,” Dr Pearce says.

“Overwatering is the biggest factor in garden water efficiency so the ‘SmartGardens’ schedule is calculated to give your garden the optimum 10mm dose of water for each area of your garden based on average rainfall patterns.

“The app also shows you the rainfall in your selected area for the past seven days, allowing you to adjust that schedule based on recent weather events.”

“This watering schedule is a good starting point for determining automatic watering system settings and regular hand-watering patterns.”

The ‘SmartGardens’ app links with the SmartGardenWatering.org.au website, a garden watering advisory tool, initiated by Geoff Connellan and colleagues from the Melbourne School of Land and Environment and developed into a website in collaboration with Dr Pearce.

The SmartGardenWatering website enables gardeners to input their suburb, plant species, various garden conditions and water tank information, for tailored water efficiency planning. By incorporating the SmartGardens app, gardeners also have a mobile watering reminder system.

“For those of us lucky enough to be going away for holidays, or who are left in charge of watering a friend’s garden over holidays, the app can tell you what rain has fallen at a different location. That way you can see if recent rain has provided enough water or not,” Dr Pearce says.

SmartGardenWatering.org.au