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The Hanging Garden: Detecting moisture levels with sensors and LED lights

Emily Spivack ( Bio / Posts ) | Tuesday, January 03, 2012 UTC

by Chris DeLuca

The hanging garden, a collaboration between Clorofilas and Aer Studio, uses basic technological components to enable plants to communicate by placing sensors in their soil to detect moisture levels. The design studios, respectively based in Manchester and Barcelona, linked the sensors to LED lights that illuminate when moisture levels get too low and the plants need watering. The heart of the project, the open-source Arduino platform, takes the information received by the sensors and relays it to the corresponding LED light. This communication apparatus between plant and human life removes a variable of uncertainty when it comes to providing a plant with the right amount of water at the appropriate time.

The hanging garden project, which was created primarily for office spaces, also enables more effective communication amongst co-workers who assume responsibility for watering the plants; if a plant has already been watered earlier in the day, for example, co-workers in the afternoon will immediately know the plant is sufficiently hydrated. The technology used to create the hanging garden might be expanded and applied to projects which involve multiple stakeholders, like communal gardening initiatives.
The project collaborators cite the relationship between nature and technology as their motivation for creating the piece, in addition to the “experience of having better communication with our plants.” By using technology to improve communication between different life forms, the hanging garden not only serves a functional purpose but also an artistic one: it makes the viewer consider his or her relationship to nature, in addition to being a highly aestheticized piece. The hanging garden is emblematic of how technology can serve to enhance our connection with the natural world.

Have other examples of technology enhancing communication between human life and the natural world? Let us know in the comments section.

Image: Aer Studio

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