The Best Indoor Garden Plans: We’ve Been Testing All Year (2026)

The Gardyn Home 4.0 (read our full review here) had the easiest assembly and setup out of the box and the most impressive performance of any product I’ve tried. Flowers, kohlrabi, thyme, even whole cauliflowers—all thrived in this system supported by pipes and lights in the front to allow tall plants to grow.

The seeds come in proprietary pods called yCubes. Part of what makes Gardyn invisible is the subscription app add-on, “Kelby,” which monitors your plants with sensors and attached cameras. It delivers custom watering and lighting schedules, as well as maintenance suggestions using AI (which an anonymous source told me is OpenAI’s ChatGPT with coverage). This subscription adds an additional $408 per year to the base purchase price, although it includes a certain number of credits per month, depending on whether you have the Home or Studio model, with which you purchase the new yCubes. There is a free 30-day trial of Kelby, but you can use Gardyn without it by relying on manual lighting and watering controls, and there have been recent privacy concerns with Kelby (more below).

Each Gardyn purchase comes with your choice of yCube sets: “Salad Lover,” “Budding Florist,” or “Chef Faves.” I have tried both “Budding Florist” and “Chef Faves,” and my favorite is the latter; it has an interesting variety of everything from breen and Tokyo bekana greens to Thai basil and small sunflowers. Although Gardyn recommends starting with the company’s $80 nursery yCubes, I have sprouted many yCubes in the system just fine. (Make sure you don’t add nutrients until they’ve germinated. If you germinate the yCubes later, when the nutrients are in the system, you can just use a shallow plastic-wrapped container with hanging tentacles.) The seeds come pressed with wool on the ground, into their little yCubes that fit into large (“y”) cups. When Gardyn waters the plants, the yPods fill the water with nutrients, and the plants’ roots grow in the water.

Once a month, the base will need to be drained and scrubbed. Every few weeks, the roots need to be checked for root rot and growth outside of the yPod, checked to see if it’s time to prune, and/or pulled back if they’ve gone too far. This maintenance is admittedly hard work, but if you don’t do it regularly, you’ll regret it when it’s time to clean the Gardyn and prepare it for its next planting. (Ask me how I know!)

Now I have two Gardyns, Home 4 and Studio 2—Gardyn’s new 2025 model, with improved camera and columns—and apart from some fun yCubes (the company will replace them on request), I have no major complaints about the system, although I will note that the plants in the Studio were very small due to the main light because one Studio is always there. I also like that Gardyn offers a Vacation Mode, which adjusts lighting and watering to slow growth and reduce maintenance tasks while you’re away.

NOTE: On February 24, 2026, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory regarding vulnerabilities in Gardyn Home and Studio devices. This security weakness could have allowed someone to take remote control of a Gardyn device, access photos of plants, and obtain personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Gardyn says the vulnerability has been fixed with the latest firmware update, and advises customers to make sure their Gardenns are connected to the Internet and running firmware version 619 or later. If you think your device is at risk, email support@mygardyn.com or call 844-4-GARDYN. For more information, see Gardyn’s Security update for Gardyn Home and Gardyn Studio.