Are you a houseplant nurturer or killer? Do you believe talking to your leafy friends is important, like a certain monarch not so far from here? Or do you just about manage to water them enough to stop them from dying?
My houseplants survive in an environment of benign neglect. The best ones, I’ve found, are the ones that can bounce back after being forgotten about for a week or so, the ones that can batten down the hatches and settle in for a bit of a slog rather than give up at the first sign of adversity. I should probably only be allowed to own a cactus.
But that doesn’t stop me from trying. Take, for example, my calathea, which has lasted about 10 years despite such benign neglect. After about four years of ticking over with a few leaves, a change of scenery kicked the plant into overdrive and it flourished. Clearly I had cracked this houseplant lark, I congratulated myself.
The victory lap, sadly, was premature. The calathea now resembles a houseplant circling the drain, on the verge of limping off to the great compost heap in the sky. Its leaves are dusty instead of velvety, drying around the edges, and nothing I do seems to make a difference.
READ MORE
So I turned its care over to Willow.
Willow is a plant sensor that will read the conditions in your room and, based on what it knows about the plant you are desperately trying to keep alive, will give you feedback and advice.
People are likely to fall into two camps on this one. There are those who think this is a solution that has no problem, that it is tech for tech’s sake and a waste of time, effort and money. But then these are also likely to be the people who either have zero plants in their home – I can’t believe these people even exist – or remember to water, feed and generally look after the ones they have.
If you have ever walked into a room and been greeted by a dehydrated, wilted spider plant or a peace lily that is floundering because you’ve overwatered it, join me in camp two; you are my people and you are the ones for whom Willow was created.
[ ‘How can I keep my new house plant happy?’Opens in new window ]
The system consists of a USB C powered hub, coin-cell-powered sensors that are placed in the soil of your houseplants and an app that crunches the data.
The sensor isn’t just a simple soil moisture monitor. Each sensor has two prongs to read soil conditions, a light pole to gauge the amount of light reaching your plant, and it measures temperature and humidity. Those are the key factors that determine whether your plant lives or dies, and whether you have to trudge back to the garden centre to buy another replacement.
You can pair the sensor to a specific plant, using the Willow app to identify the exact plant you are using it with so you get personalised feedback and advice. And then you wait.
It takes a couple of days for the sensor to gather enough data to start being useful, but by day two, I was getting alerts about the soil being too dry and the plant not getting enough light.
The sensors measure continuously so a plant that was getting the right amount of light first thing in the morning may falter towards the end of the afternoon. If the conditions stay poor for too long, you get an alert to point you to the problem.
I wasn’t sure this would be enough to get my stressed plant back to full health. To make sure I was on the right track, I used the subscription feature, Willow Grow, to get more information.
If your houseplant is starting to look a bit wilted, but watering isn’t doing much good, you can scan the plant with the app and it will give you advice based on what it thinks is the most likely outcome.
At first, Willow didn’t seem too certain that underwatering was the problem, but it suggested that uneven watering might have been an issue. Despite 20 years of houseplants, I was unaware this was an issue. It offered up some advice – repotting, moving it to a better spot, not just dumping the water in one spot – that seemed to have an impact within a few days.
[ Smart technology to help you make the most of your gardenOpens in new window ]
In the meantime, the sensor delivered data on the plant’s living conditions. Humidity level? Comfy. Temperature? Just right. That data, together with the water levels and light, was used to produce a plant score that let me know that while things weren’t perfect, the plant was actually not doing too badly. For now.
The following day, the plant score dipped a bit as the soil got too damp. By the third day of data and plant scores, things were looking better again.
The good news? The plant is now on the right track. It looks less wilted and crispy around the edges. As long as Willow keeps nudging me, we might just make it to the end of the year.
Good
If houseplants quake when they see you coming, Willow could be for you. It gives you timely alerts and useful information, rather than just the data that, let’s face it, in the hands of an amateur plant enthusiast could end up doing more harm than good.
Bad
It might be tech overkill for some people, especially given the €50 for the starter pack that contains a single sensor and the hub. But I’ve easily spent that and more on houseplants that I’ve killed off and had to replace, so, for me, it is money well spent.
Everything else
You can add multiple sensors to your hub – up to 40 – to track different plants, giving each one a nickname. And plant care is personalised to the particular variety you have, so you can be sure you are doing your very best to keep your leafy friends alive.
Verdict
If your thumbs are more grim reaper than green, this could be the solution.
