• by Aaron Baar , March 15, 2016

Connected home, meet the connected yard.

The Scotts Miracle-Gro company is teaming with a few technology providers and creating its own app and software platform to bring home automation to the outdoor space. Last week at SXSW, the company introduced its Gro online platform and app, which will — among other things — track recent weather and rainfall, local soil types, and offer plant recommendations and maintenance instructions based on that information. 

“For the first time, your yard communicates with you,” says a video on the website. “It tells you how much water it needs, what grows best, and how to take care of it. Gro knows every inch of your yard better than you do.” The video also suggests the app uses hyper-local weather data, as well as wind, soil and bug conditions to create “easy-to-use” information to maintain a yard or garden.

To optimize the platform, Scotts has been working with a number of water sensor and controller manufacturers such as Blossom, Rachio, Green IQ and Lono to integrate their products with Gro’s platform and provide more information about the yard’s conditions.

“The notion is, consumers will be able to go to a centralized buy and be able to build what they want,” Manrique Brenes, founder and CEO of Blossom, tells Marketing Daily.  

The first area of focus will be monitoring and control of water usage, adjusting watering levels based on the soil’s current moisture content and the weather forecast.“We have begun to integrate the data flow between our product and the app, Brenes says. “You will see a bit more in the future [with] more integration between Gro and Blossom.”