Best indoor garden designs for plant lovers everywhere

Gardening is an extremely therapeutic activity, and though I may not engage in it all the time, the few times that I have, I found it really delightful and soothing. Growing, tending to, and being surrounded by plants is intensely satisfying, all your worries slowly fade away, and you are simply enthralled by nature. Indoor gardening works well in modern homes. From LG’s latest indoor gardening appliance that is 3 feet tall to an air purifier that doubles up as a plant caretaker – we have a myriad range of options when it comes to growing plants within the comfort of your home! These unique, innovative, and thoughtful designs promise to take care of all your indoor gardening needs. You may be interested in trying them, and I would love to add indoor gardening into my everyday routine.

1. LG’s tiiun

Sure, a refrigerator can keep your veggies fresh… but LG’s tiiun can keep it fresher! Designed as a unique home appliance that lets you grow your own herbs and veggies the LG tiiun was announced in the run-up to CES 2022. The indoor gardening appliance is roughly the size of a dorm refrigerator, standing at approximately 3 feet tall, and features two shelves that can accommodate up to 6 all-in-one seed packages and various seed kits.

Why is it noteworthy?

The term “tiiun” comes from Korean and means “to sprout”. This is LG’s way to say that the appliance can be used as a self-sufficient, all-in-one garden. It creates the perfect microclimate for plants and mimics light cycles, so that you can keep them anywhere without having to worry about sunlight. LG’s Flexible Weather Control System creates the ideal situations for organic growth while also keeping pests at bay. An internal watering system also delivers water to the plants (8 times a day) to keep them hydrated. You just need to install the tiiun, and then let your plants take care of themselves.

What we like

• A foolproof way to grow your own veggies and herbs in the comfort of your home
• Fun and simple even for those with no gardening experience

What we dislike

• The form is a bit too bulky for homes with space constraints

2. Plant Light No1

Drawing the fine line between a functional piece of plant-growing hardware and an elegant tabletop lighting accessory, Plant Light No1 turns your interior space into an ideal set of conditions for growing plants.

Why is it noteworthy?

The light comes with a neo-industrial design aesthetic, and sports a surface to rest your planter on. Above it sits a height-adjustable lamp that comes equipped with full-spectrum LEDs that mimic the light quality (color), light intensity (brightness), and photoperiod (duration) of the sun, allowing any plant to grow indoors.

What we like

• Comes with a matrix of full-spectrum 90+ CRI LEDs that mimic the sun in a way that sets PL1 apart
• A built-in timer allows PL1 to intuitively switch on or off, providing the right duration of light for your plants

What we dislike

• It’s not available yet!

3. Paradise

Designed to reduce domestic waste, Paradise is an automated plant cultivator and compost bin that uses integrated technology to prompt users when the compost or plants need tending. Paradise, which is conceived as a rolling cart and consists of modular parts that can be combined to create optimal growing conditions. Paradise starts at its top with an LED strip. This strips artificial sunlight to integrated planters on the top of Paradise’s first module.

Why is it noteworthy?

While spending more time in our homes has helped to rejuvenate interior design, there has been a rise in household waste. Robin Akira, a designer, created Paradise to address this problem. It is a houseplant cultivator that has integrated compost bins, and an odor-sealing cover. This allows us to reduce domestic waste.

What we like

• Integrates greenery into our interior spaces
• An odor-sealing lid

What we dislike

• Could be messy to have such a design in our indoor living space

4. CURA

CURA is an all-encompassing plant-growth apparatus that takes care of the light and water requirements for any plant. The automated system can be set up to meet the needs of flowering, air-purifying, ornamental, or herbaceous plants.

Why is it noteworthy?

Available in 3 sizes and across floor-standing, tabletop, and wall-mounted varieties, CURA is a halo-shaped horticultural light that’s designed to activate and promote plant growth. Powered by OSRAM LEDs, the lamp can output different wavelengths of light that help create the right growth conditions for different types of plants. CURA has presets that can be used to control the growth of herbs and fruits, flowers and fruit, indoor gardening plants, germination, and other stages.

What we like

• The lamp can either be programmed to work automatically or can be configured using CURA’s smartphone app, allowing you to effectively play horticulturist with your indoor plants
• The lamp in Ambient Mode can also be configured to dynamically respond to music

What we dislike

No complaints!

5. The 4RESTPLANT

Rather aptly named the 4RESTPLANT (pronounced Forest Plant), this quirky little planter comes made from a porous clay, in the shape of a tree trunk – a design detail that makes immediate sense when you realize how the planter functions. Unlike traditional planters that act simply as vessels for soil and the plant, the 4RESTPLANT works quite like how nature does.

Why is it noteworthy?

Plants can find their own surface to grow on. They often hold on to the stump or root of trees for support and structure, but rely on soil already loosened/aerated by tree roots. The 4RESTPLANT works in a similar fashion – the tree-shaped planter comes with a hollow design that holds water on the inside (with a nano-silver coating to prevent the water from blooming) and features four ‘seed pads’ that are arranged on the outside, around the base of the planter. The planter’s porous design ends up wicking water outside to the seed pads, allowing them to grow by holding onto the trunk’s rough surface for structure. This basically recreates what happens in nature on a smaller scale, creating a planter that literally brings a slice of the beautiful outdoors into your home!

What we like

• Grows microgreens and other small ferns and plants in your home with little to no effort
• Basically recreates how plants grow in nature

What we dislike

• There are similar designs on the market

6. The Blow design

This concept design has turned this device into part of your room decoration and also into a “planterior” air purifier.

Why is it noteworthy?

Blow’s design is similar to a window or venetian blinds, but it opens from the left and goes backwards. When you slide the handle, the cover on the front slowly opens and in turn, also turns on the air purifier. The degree you use the handle will determine how strong the airflow becomes. So it mimics the natural wind that we feel when opening a window and how much wind comes in depending on how much that window is opened. The air is purified through a filter and then discharged through that window frame.

What we like

• The carbon and HEPA filters are easily replaceable to ensure that you’re really breathing in purified air.
• You can place this air purifier in three different ways in your room

What we dislike

No complaints!

7. The Ocean Sun

Designed to be more than just your average USB-powered work light, the Ocean Sun Plant Light, as its name quite aptly suggests, features a calibrated set of LEDs that emit light similar to the light from the sun. Made primarily for indoor plants that don’t receive too much natural light, the Ocean Sun Plant Light provides them with the right spectrum of light to enable photosynthesis and foster growth… and unlike the sun, it can fit in your palm.

Why is it noteworthy?

The Ocean Sun features a compact, sleek design. It has a precision machined aluminum shell with flicker-free LEDs and draws power from the USB-C port on its back. Each lamp comes along with its own adjustable USB-C stand cable that lets you position and angle the lamp however you want, although the Ocean Sun works with any third-party cable too, giving you the freedom to hook it up to your laptop, a power bank, or even a set of solar panels with a USB output!

What we like

• Compact form that fits in your palm
• High-end flicker-free LEDs

What we dislike

• Not too sure how well plants would grow with this light

8. Jungle

Most commonly in homes across the world, indoor gardens are a form of biophilic design. Interpreting biophilia in a similar way, Jungle, designed by Poland-based KABO & PYDO design studio, is a planter that can hang from the ceiling and also function as a semi-flush mount light fixture.

Why is it noteworthy?

Comprised of only a few parts, the beauty of Jungle lies in the design’s simplicity. Jungle, a hybrid planter/light fixture, is defined by its bulbous and capsule-shaped central piece. The capsule-shaped planter emanates a warm, golden light that’s diffused with an opaque body. An opaque body diffuses light, softens it and enhances plant life. It also provides a canvas on which to hang teeming greenery.

What we like

• The simple form emphasizes the beauty of the plants
• The lamp emits a soft and soothing light

What we dislike

• You need to stand on a stool or a little ladder to water the plants

9. Burmistrova’s smart planter

This smart planter can monitor the condition of the air, soil, and plant to ensure it receives the right amount of water and light to grow healthier. Designed with the working population in mind (who have less time to care for their plants, but love to have them in their indoors), the plant pot can artificially control humidity, air temperature, and more to ensure plants do not die during the user’s long absence. This endeavor can be further beneficial for the users, who can through a mobile app, control, monitor, and see the plant’s performance from anywhere.

Why is it noteworthy?

Smart planters are available dime a dozen. Some options require artificial lighting to grow plants in the shaded areas of your house. Others keep them happy and healthy on their own. In the already crowded, but high-demand segment, designer Evgeniya Burmistrova has introduced a smart flower system with climate control that takes care of the plants independently and leaves you with a green, inviting environment at home.

What we like

• The plant pot can artificially control humidity, air temperature, and more to ensure plants do not die during the user’s long absence

What we dislike

• The aesthetics are unexciting and quite similar to other planters on the market

10. Vista

Vista is a smart gardening system that uses hydroponics to cultivate lush greenery in a growth tray that mimics the natural terrain of a mountainous landscape.

Why is it noteworthy?

Too often, smart gardens today place more emphasis on function than aesthetics. This results in cold vertical farms which look better in research centers’ greenhouses than in living rooms. That’s why designer Juhyuck Han created Vista, a smart garden appliance that mimics a landscape’s natural terrain and scales it down to fit in our homes.

What we like

• Vista’s grow tray mimics the terrain of a natural landscape to bring users closer to nature
• Equipped with GPS technology, the glass container reveals various pieces of daily information such as the weather, temperature, date, and time

What we dislike

• Bulky + space-consuming design