10 Indoor Hydroponic Herb Gardens 2020 [Buying Guide]

Your Authors and Guides

Heather
Patton

Jennifer
Trimbee

Samantha
Dewitt

How to Pick Your Indoor Garden

Here’s the deal: If you’re looking for an easy and affordable way to grow fresh herbs, vegetables, and flowers right at home, you’re in the right place! We’ve researched over 25 new and bestselling hydroponic herb gardens to find the best ones for you. The best hydroponic systems for sale automate the entire growing process, making it super convenient to enjoy fresh food. They take the guesswork out of gardening by reminding you when to add water and nutrients to the system. The rest runs on auto-pilot. Miracle-Gro is the leading and best-selling brand of these mini hydroponic gardens, and almost all of our top picks ended up coming from this brand because they offer the best quality. All recommended products have energy-efficient LED lighting, and some of them even have apps, Sounds good? If you’re ready to start your own indoor hydroponic garden, read on!

Power: Listed in Watts, this spec shows how much power you can expect your hydroponic greenhouse to draw. It can also give you an idea of how powerful the lighting intensity is. Generally, 5 to 45W is an ideal balance.

Pods: This number tells you how many planting sections there are. More pods mean you can add more plants, such as for a full indoor vegetable garden, while fewer pods may work best for keeping a handful of herbs.

Grow Height: How tall can your plants grow before they start bumping up against the light? The grow height (in inches) will tell you. Most hydroponic gardening systems in this style have adjustable-height lighting systems, by the way.

Product Dimensions: How big is the darn thing? You want to avoid hydroponic setups that won’t fit in your available space, but a larger garden also means a larger water reservoir and more pods to grow plants in. It’s a trade-off.

Full Spectrum LED: LEDs are more energy-efficient than CFL and HPS lighting while lasting longer and running cooler. Full-spectrum LED provides all wavelengths that the sun does to help plants grow and thrive.

Available Colors: Most of these indoor garden systems are available in simple, modern black, but some are also available in other colors and even stainless steel for a sleek look. The choice is yours, we’ll tell you about the options.

Top 10 Products

Are you ready to start growing hydroponic lettuce, hydroponic herbs, and hydroponic… everything else? Great! Our top pick and budget pick are the first reviews you’ll see, followed by eight other runner ups for the best hydroponic system. All winners featured here offer excellent quality and value, so simply pick the one you like best. Bon appétit!

Miracle-Gro Bounty Wi-Fi

This brand new, high-tech hydroponic herb garden features Bounty Wi-Fi connectivity that sends you information through the free Aerogarden app about how your plants are doing. The app also gives you access to gardening tips, common questions, and customer service. The control panel on this indoor herb garden is an interactive LCD touchscreen that keeps you up-to-date on lighting, water, nutrients, and days since planting. You can grow up to nine beautiful plants, and the 45W LED has an impressive 30,000-hour lifetime rating. You also get starter seed pods and nutrients for an entire season. The garden is available in matte black plastic, stainless steel, red stainless steel, and platinum (dark gray) stainless steel. If you tend to forget to refill the water when life gets busy, having those smartphone alerts through the app can be a lifesaver (for your plants, anyway). Although many of the available indoor herb systems are only available in plastic, this option is also available in stainless steel for extra durability and a premium finish. This indoor garden also offers the most grow pods out of all of the options we reviewed, so it is an excellent choice for people who want to have access to a variety of fresh hydroponic herbs and vegetables.

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Miracle-Gro Sprout

Not sure how much you want to commit to an indoor hydroponic herb garden? Keep things simple with this affordable, three-plant hydroponic setup. Available in white, black, red, or teal, this small hydro garden has a push-button control panel and a water level view window. It controls the growing lights for you, and the panel will remind you to add nutrients by turning on a light. Just check in on it every few days to a week, and the system will easily keep your plants happy. The LEDs have a 20,000-hour rating, so they’ll last you a long time. Like other AeroGarden models, it comes with starter growing pods and nutrients for one season. This tiny herb garden takes up just 5 by 11 inches and can be adjusted to a 10-inch grow height. You can easily grow hydroponic flowers or veggies in any room of your home, from the kitchen to a closet. Tip: Keep it somewhere where you’ll notice it enough to check on it periodically. This budget hydro herb garden is best for people who just want a few plants, like fresh basil or thyme for cooking.

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Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Ultra

Similar to our top pick, the AeroGarden Ultra has seven pods rather than nine, but the same 24-inch grow height that makes it a great choice for growing larger plants in your indoor hydroponic vegetable garden. It is available in black and stretched to the max grow height, it has an overall height of 34 inches. So you need some empty space to put this garden in - probably not shoved under a cabinet on your kitchen counter. The interactive LCD screen control panel takes care of the lighting automatically, and lets you know when you need to add water and nutrients. The screen keeps you up-to-date on the time since planting and gives you tips and help when you need it. If you like the planting possibilities of our top pick, but don’t think you need an app to remind you about your indoor hydroponic garden, this option might be for you. There are seven growing pods which give you a lot of room to try a variety of flowers, veggies, or herbs. It needs more space than models with fewer pods, but that can be worth it if you want to use it to replace supermarket vegetables.

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Click & Grow Smart Garden 3

The brand new Click & Grow Smart Garden 3 is one of the best indoor herb gardens for sale. It combines cutting-edge technology with a very affordable price. In fact, it's the only non-Miracle-Gro option that made our list! It originally came about through a wildly successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and has a similar informative and helpful app to the AeroGarden app. The Click & Grow app gives you growing tips and help, as well as sending you alerts and reminders to add water and check on your plants. The LED grow light cycles 16 hours on and eight hours off. You can use Click & Grow seed cartridges, or get seedless refill cartridges if you want to plant your own seeds. The product has a chic design but also has the lowest grow height option out of all of the indoor garden systems we reviewed, plus it's available in three trendy colors to match your kitchen design. You can keep track of the water level with the handy float in the watering area, too. For a more stylish version of our budget pick with all of the app features of our top pick, you may prefer the Click & Grow 3 garden. It has a sleek, modern look and is high quality. Overall, it’s very pleasing to the eye, and a variety of plant cartridges are available. Highly recommended!

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Miracle-Gro Harvest Elite

This six-pod indoor hydroponic garden is available in regular and red stainless steel. If you want an indoor garden setup with a sleeker, more modern design, you may prefer the stainless steel material over plastic garden models. It has a basic push-button LCD control panel that turns the lights on and off and reminds you when it’s time to add water and nutrients. You get plant pods and nutrients to get you started, too. The Harvest Elite is stylish enough to blend into any kitchen appliance lineup with its brushed stainless steel finish and has that high-class look that’s hard to find in a garden kit. There’s a lot to like here! This is a middle-of-the-line option for people who don’t want to commit to growing nine plants at once but feel like three are too few. With six pod spaces, you can grow several types of herbs and even stick a few hydroponic carrots into the mix if you want! You can also find this same unit in plastic if you prefer. The 12-inch max grow height gives you room to grow a range of small plants and herbs.

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Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Extra

The AeroGarden Extra has a streamlined black plastic design, but a different control panel style than the LCD screen seen in several of the AeroGarden models. This panel lets you select the type of plant you’re growing (flowers, herbs, salad greens, or vegetables) so that the garden system will optimize the lighting for those plant types. It works great! You can also set it to 12 hours on or 24 hours on. The panel also reminds you when to add water and nutrients, and lets you set the level of water pumping as well. The seven growing pods give you a middle-of-the-line range of options if you think the three-pod is too limiting. This is a cute little setup that has some genuinely good features packed into the control panel, giving you a little more information in clear view with just a few lights and signs. It also stretches to give your plants a max grow height of 24 inches, the high end of grow height options, which is helpful for taller plants like trellised tomatoes or mature basil plants. You can also grow a few large or spreading plants by using three or four of the pods rather than all of them.

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Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Harvest 6

The Harvest 6 is available in white, black, red, or teal glossy plastic. It’s similar to the Harvest Elite, with 20W LEDs, six grow pods, and a max grow height of 12 inches. The interactive LCD controller is pretty simple, but it automates the grow lights and gives you nutrient and water reminders. The set comes with seed cartridges and nutrients for the season to get you started. It has a 10.75 by 7.5-inch footprint, and maxes out at a height of 17 inches. This makes it easy to fit in on a kitchen counter, table, or shelf. The six pods mean you have some room to play with what plants you grow, from hydroponic strawberries to herbs to peonies. Just put it somewhere where you’ll remember to check on it periodically. The 12-inch grow height puts a limit on the types of plants you can grow. Some plants will need regular pruning to keep them under 12 inches tall, such as established basil and dill plants. This can make this garden setup easier to use to start plants that you intend to plant outside if you’re ready for that kind of commitment!

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Miracle-Gro AeroGarden 7

The AeroGarden 7 has a similar control panel to the AeroGarden Extra: lights notify you when you need to add water or nutrients. You can set the light cycle for salad greens, vegetables, flowers, or herbs to get the best growth, or simply set it to 12 or 24 hours on. This indoor herb garden is available in black plastic and comes with starter seed cartridges and nutrients for the season. The 12-inch growing space limits the size of the seven plants you can grow at a time but is enough for many types of herbs and flowers to grow happily. This option has the most growing pods after our top pick, so if you want to grow a lot of plants but want an alternative to the top pick, the AeroGarden 7 comes close to its pod number. However, it has a plain black plastic design that not everybody may like. Go for one of the stainless steel AeroGarden models if you want a sleeker look. Otherwise, this indoor herb garden has a lot of possibilities. It is significantly larger than several of the six-pod models, however, so you may want to choose a six-pod AeroGarden to conserve the most space while growing the most plants possible.

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Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Harvest

The AeroGarden Harvest is a cute little appliance available in white or black glossy plastic with an attractive control panel. The panel uses pushbuttons and lights to let you set the light cycle, and it alerts you when you need to add water and nutrients. The 12-inch grow height limits you to medium-sized sized plants and herbs, but also keeps the product relatively compact and easy to fit anywhere in your home. You can set the grow lights to different cycles based on what you’re growing, and you also get seeds and nutrients for the season to get you started. Like other AeroGarden models, this hydro setup is designed to be easy to use and maintain. The six growing pods give you some room to play with what you grow, from salad greens to fresh herbs, and the hydroponic pump is so quiet you may not notice it running! Compared to other Harvest models, this one has a more basic control panel in the same push-button style with lights and diagrams with instructions on using the panel. It has a smaller footprint than the seven-pod Harvest model, measuring just 10.75 by 7.5 inches compared to the seven-pod model’s 18.5 by 10.5 inches.

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Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Classic

This model of the AeroGarden Classic comes in black plastic and has a long-lasting LED light, like other AeroGarden models. It has a control panel style similar to the Harvest models with buttons, lights, and instructions on how to work the control panel. You can set the automatic light cycle for different plants, including herbs, salad greens, vegetables, and flowers. Or just set the light to 12 or 24 hours on at a time during the day. The panel also lights up to remind you when to add nutrients. Plus, a water level viewing window is right on the front of the AeroGarden above the control panel, so it’s easy to keep track of! This six-pod AeroGarden has a larger size than, say the AeroGarden Harvest reviewed above so you may prefer it if you want to grow larger plants since there will be more room for them to spread out. The 12-inch max grow height is more suited to “low” plants like strawberries, herbs, and some flowers. Although not as high-tech as our top pick, we liked that we could easily check on the water level without relying on a sensor light hidden in the setup.

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About the Author

Jennifer Trimbee

Expert Researcher and Writer

Jennifer Trimbee, a lead researcher and writer at GeekWrapped, is an expert writer with many years of experience. Jennifer writes about technology, sports, outdoor, and gear products.

Indoor Hydroponic Herb Gardens

Top 10 Buying Guide

Our Recommendations

Miracle-Gro Bounty Wi-Fi

Miracle-Gro Sprout

How to Pick Your Indoor Garden

Top 10 Products

Miracle-Gro Bounty Wi-Fi

Miracle-Gro Sprout

Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Ultra

Click & Grow Smart Garden 3

Miracle-Gro Harvest Elite

Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Extra

Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Harvest 6

Miracle-Gro AeroGarden 7

Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Harvest

Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Classic

About the Author

TOP PICK

Miracle-Gro Bounty Wi-Fi