Innovations like autonomous mowers and weeding robots let you upgrade your corner of nature.
6 min
Whenever the weather permits, Britt Wood drinks his morning coffee on his patio, proudly watching his little guy mow his lawn. No, he doesn’t have a particularly diligent son. Mr. Wood, the CEO of the National Association of Landscape Professionals, recently purchased an autonomous robot that drives around his South Riding, Va., yard, quietly munching each blade of grass down to the ideal 2½-inch height.
“It makes life a little easier,” said Mr. Wood of the convenient, “pet-like” robot. “Once you get one of these, your lawn never looks better.”
If 2020 was the year that many grew dependent on their backyards as a safe outdoor refuge, then 2021 might be the year they figure out how to spend less time maintaining their go-to retreats. One appealing solution: Upgrade the way you nurture your corner of nature with techy new tools—from robots that cut down weeds to sprinkler systems that rejig their run time depending on impending weather.
Anything that lets Americans enjoy more stress-free hours outside is good news: 27% of homeowners overhauled their gardens in 2020 and 19% plan to tackle an outdoor improvement project in 2021, according to a December 2020 survey by tool manufacturer Craftsman.
Here, our guide to the gear that might leave your neighbours wondering how you’ve gotten your garden so trim and tidy.
Set an autonomous electric mower like Husqvarna’s Automower to run overnight and you can sleep later the next day—and achieve a cleaner, greener cut than most push models can deliver. By giving grass a regular (even daily) trim instead of lobbing off a lot once weekly, robo mowers leave small clippings the soil can more easily reabsorb, said Frank Mariani, the owner of Mariani Landscaping in Lake Bluff, Ill. An app controls the mower’s schedule, sets trimming height and, once you install the included boundary wires around your property, pings you if the robot leaves your yard in the arms of a jealous thief. Depending on the model, the mowers can chug away for up to four hours per charge, and, like Roombas, drive themselves back to their doghouse-like charging stations to juice back up. With their sensors, robo mowers are also safer than most manual counterparts. “You could practically lay your baby in front of the mower and nothing would happen,” Mr. Mariani said. When choosing a mower, consider the square footage and incline of your yard. Many less-expensive, lower-powered models freeze up on hills to prevent toppling. And be warned: an automower won’t give your lawn stripes of just-mowed green. (From $1699, husqvarna.com)
Water your grass too little, and it will shrivel into straw. Too often, and you’ll weaken the roots while encouraging mould and bacteria to grow. “That’s where smart irrigation comes in,” said Mr. Wood, who explained that smart weather-and-moisture-sensing systems outperform traditional irrigation setups—and waste less water—when it comes to keeping your garden hydrated. The Rachio 3 smart irrigation system controller, for example, automatically adjusts your watering schedule to coming weather patterns in your area. Just replace your old sprinkler controller with Rachio’s using the wires from your existing setup, and use the companion app to set a watering schedule for your system’s eight or 16 zones (from approx. $300, rachio.com). For the most strategic watering schedule possible, pair the Rachio with Weatherflow’s new Tempest Weather System. Once you install the water bottle-sized personal weather station on a post or pole 6 feet off the ground, the device will provide a forecast via its companion app that beats the local news for accuracy. The Tempest app will even alert you to garden-wrecking weather events like frost and high winds. (approx. $420, weatherflow.com).
To avoid making the same deadly watering mistakes in your potted plants and container gardens, stick Ecowitt’s unobtrusive Soil Moisture Sensor with Digital LCD Display into the soil. The device measures root wetness to tell you via a delightful potted plant graphic on the display when it’s time to water ($40, www.ecowitt.com). Alternatively, opt for a pot that does the measuring for you. Just fill the Self-Watering Wet Pot’s outer glass reservoir with water, and your finicky forsythia will absorb only what it needs through the inner, terra-cotta pot walls (from around $44, store.moma.org).
Heavy, roaring, gas-powered trimmers can seem more than mildly threatening. But new, electric variants are tame enough to let anyone become a serene topiary artist. “The [battery] tech is finally to a point where it really makes sense to use it,” said Mr. Wood of the quiet, cordless models that have recently hit the market. At only 5 pounds, Craftsman’s new V20 Cordless 2-In-1 Hedge Trimmer and Grass Shear Kit is lightweight enough to let you one-handedly hack at unruly bushes and overgrown flower beds ($80, lowes.com). Komok’s Cordless Electric Pruning Shears, meanwhile, use a carbon-steel blade and brushless motor to deftly cut through branches up to 1.2 inches thick ($296, amazon.com). The best part? Your neighbours won’t want to turn the hose on you for disturbing the peace all afternoon.
Sure, you could crouch in the dirt pulling weeds out by the root. Or, you could sic the turtle-like Tertill Garden Weeding Robot on them. Every day, the Tertill roams your plant beds, chopping the tops off emerging weeds before they suffocate your dahlias. With a rugged, weatherproof shell and top-mounted solar panel to power the device, it can stay in your garden all season long. Just remember to cage your seedlings. (approx. $450, tertill.com)
Feel like you take wildlife for granted? Try the Bird Buddy smart feeder to acquaint yourself with your local flying families. Using AI, an integrated camera and a companion phone app, the device counts up the variety of species who have come to nosh. “It’s like Pokémon Go for birds,” said co-founder Franci Zidar of the way the app turns attracting avian visitors into a game. Just add bird seed. (approx. $245, mybirdbuddy.com)
Subscription services that deliver seeds, moss and more to your door
For forest-y vibes in a shady corner of your backyard or a shot of color in an austere rock garden, moss does nicely. Monthly deliveries from the forests of Arkansas give you the chance to decorate with spiky haircap, plush pillow and delicate fern mosses. (around $62 for three months, teresasplants.com)
Gardening is about more than just the green stuff that comes out of the dirt. While it certainly delivers live plants, like Japanese painted ferns and Crotons, this subscription plan often includes interesting containers, soil and fertilizer, tools and accessories. (approx. $50 a month, mygardenbox.com)
This quarterly box from container-gardening experts based in Dallas delivers healthy, rooted herbs and flowers, selected for your region and growing conditions. You’ll also get access to Gardenuity’s Grow Pro service, with on-call expert advice and weather alerts. (approx. 193, gardenuity.com)
While most garden plans focus on spring and summer plots, Bloomin Bin gives you year-round, season-specific seeds and saplings in a quarterly box. Each one comes with detailed care instructions from a master gardener, and a choice of flowers or fruits/vegetables. (From $10, bloominbin.com)
Each month, subscribers receive eight to 10 varieties of organic seeds of unusual herbs, edible flowers and vegetables along with info cards. The April box includes seeds for Thai Pink Egg Tomatoes, Carentan Leeks, and Red Fire Orach. (around $28 a month, seedbankbox.com)
—Matthew Kronsberg
Professional green thumbs on no-tech, time-honoured paths to perfecting your plot
Landscape Designer, founder of the Perfect Earth Project
If you’re willing to mow higher and let your lawn look more relaxed and thicker, the grass will naturally out-compete weeds. We say that you grow to 4 inches, then cut to 3 inches. It should look tousled—like you want to flop into it.
Founding Principal of BASE Landscape Architecture
Any space, no matter the size, can be a bee-friendly, pollinator garden. Even on your balcony, a pot of flowers (bees love blue and purple) can provide them with food. Leave fresh water with stones or marbles so bees can drink without drowning.
Author of Lessons from Plants
Grow plants of the same height together, like purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans, or companion plants that require different, complementary nutrients. These types of pairings are beneficial because they limit biological competition for access to light or nutrients.
Master Rosarian
You don’t want to put roses where they don’t want to grow. As in real estate, it’s location, location, location. Planting in good, sandy, loamy soil that drains well (but not too well), in a sunny location with good air circulation is going to give you an exceptional rose garden.
Senior Horticulturist, Missouri Botanical Garden
One of the best things you can do if your area has clay soil, besides add compost, is to add calcined clay-like Turface MVP. As counterintuitive as it sounds, it’ll even out moisture retention, improve drainage and reduce compaction.
–M. K.
Reprinted by permission of The Wall Street Journal, Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: April 16, 2021.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
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As millions flock to GLP-1s, doctors warn the drugs can cause rapid and significant muscle loss.
5 min
Chanel Robinson achieved exactly what the gold rush of blockbuster weight-loss drugs promised: She lost nearly 100 pounds, lowered her cholesterol to normal levels and reined in her polycystic ovary syndrome.
Yet, nearly three years into her journey on Mounjaro, the 30-year-old from Atlanta, Ga., is discovering the hidden costs of the slimmed-down life.
Robinson experiences muscle fatigue daily, feeling physically weak, frail and often cold. Robinson said she experiences bursts of sluggishness sporadically during the day, and has trouble with basic tasks like opening a jar. “It shouldn’t be this difficult,” she said.
GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro and Zepbound have been a success for public health and the pharmaceutical companies that make them. Obesity rates are falling, the volume of food consumed in America is declining and retailers report a slump in sales of plus-size apparel. It has improved health and happiness for millions of people.
But for at least some of the 13 million Americans taking them, losing muscle along with fat is an unexpected downside that isn’t broadly discussed or immediately apparent.
The drugs can cause rapid and significant loss of lean muscle mass, up to 10%, comparable to a decade or more of aging, according to an analysis published by the American Diabetes Association.
The loss of lean tissue is similar to weight loss from dieting, but the magnitude over a short period can lead to frailty, instability and lack of coordination, doctors and researchers say. Another concern is that losing muscle could slow down patients’ metabolism, leading to weight regain.
“We are curing obesity by encouraging frailty,” said Daniel Green, principal research fellow at the University of Western Australia, who contributed to the analysis. Many taking weight-loss medications initially lose fat and feel great, but quickly start to feel weak and lethargic, he said.
Green’s research showed that the rate of muscle loss could be slowed significantly by regular strength workouts. “It should say ‘must be taken with resistance training’ on the box,” he said.
Drugmakers say weight-loss drugs should be taken only on the advice of a physician and as part of a long-term plan that includes diet and exercise.
A spokesperson for Eli Lilly, maker of Zepbound, said Food and Drug Administration guidelines say it should be used “with increased physical activity.” The spokesperson added: “Sustainable weight loss is about more than a number on a scale.”
Both Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk said clinical trials showed users did lose some lean muscle tissue, though at far lower rates than fat. Liz Skrbkova, a spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk, said that trials for its drug Wegovy showed changes in muscle mass didn’t “significantly differ” from patients who took a placebo. Eli Lilly said users lost three times more fat weight than lean tissue.
Rayna Kingston, 30, from Denver, said her injections of Zepbound left her feeling so tired the following day that she struggled to complete anything other than basic tasks. She said she shifted her dose to a Sunday because Mondays were her least busy day. Her partner would bring her meals in bed because she felt so weak.
She stopped exercising, and said her doctor didn’t give her any guidance on strength training or muscle maintenance. “I was relying on Reddit forums to understand what was happening to my body,” she said. She got so frustrated with the fatigue she came off the medication just under two months later.
Experts say that losing muscle at such a rate can be especially dangerous for those over 50 or with osteoporosis or limited mobility as it could lead to an increased risk of injury. “Loss of muscle mass is detrimental to moving around and quality of life, but it is also not safe,” said Katsu Funai, associate professor at the University of Utah.
Elderly Americans are set to be able to get GLP-1s from Medicare from July.
There is also pushback from doctors and regulators against using weight-loss drugs as a “quick fix” to lose a bit of weight.
People who take GLP-1s regain weight four times faster than those who lose weight through lifestyle interventions, and weight regained is often mostly fat, according to a recent analysis published in the British Medical Journal. There currently are few, if any, guidelines or studies on de-prescribing the drugs, researchers say.
The nurse practitioner who prescribed Robinson the medication didn’t warn her that resistance training is essential to maintaining muscle mass, Robinson said. She said she regrets not exercising and now does Pilates once a week.
In the haste to disrupt the obesity epidemic, weight loss has been treated as the singular, undisputed metric of success, which experts say is problematic.
“People worship body weight as an outcome measure because it’s simple, quick and inexpensive,” said Green. “But what matters is fat and muscle mass, which is more expensive to measure as it requires an MRI.”
Grace Parkin, 34, a property manager from Sheffield, England, has lost 125 pounds after she started taking Mounjaro in 2024. “I don’t care about my muscle mass as long as I’m a healthy weight,” she said.
The doctor who prescribed the drug didn’t tell her to exercise, though the pharmacy that sold the medication gave her information on exercise and protein intake, she said.
She didn’t exercise and said she soon felt side effects: a “deathly cold, from the inside” likely because of the drug. Still, she vowed to keep going, saying the weight loss was worth it.
In response to some of the side effects, drug companies are hoping to develop weight-loss treatments aimed at preserving or even building lean muscle mass.
German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim recently said it had promising results from one such drug. Eli Lilly last September halted a trial of a similar drug.
While weight-loss medications are designed as lifelong treatments for chronic diseases, namely obesity and Type 2 diabetes, they are increasingly marketed as lifestyle fixes.
Tennis superstar Serena Williams, who used GLP-1s to slim down after having children, was featured in this year’s Super Bowl commercial promoting telehealth company Ro’s weight-loss medication.
Serena Williams poses for an ad campaign for a weight-loss drug. Ro/Handout/Reuters
Women may be particularly vulnerable to the drugs’s side effects, which can also include nausea, diarrhea, migraines and rarer cases of pancreatitis.
A study last year from a university hospital in Turin, Italy, showed that women are more prone to adverse reactions to weight-loss drugs than men, including muscle loss.
Green, the researcher, said the issue is of particular concern to those taking GLP-1s recreationally and who don’t have much muscle mass to begin with. Others say a lack of oversight is compounding the issue.
“Patients are self-reporting, and telehealth companies don’t have the patient in front of them to conduct a proper medical assessment,” said Rupal Mathur, an internist in Houston whose practice specializes in weight loss.
She said medical spas are prescribing off-label drugs that don’t meet the criteria set out by the FDA that justify a prescription.
The number of people taking weight-loss drugs who are not living with obesity or Type 2 diabetes is difficult to track since it is unregulated.
However, an analysis by the FDA from 2023 found that more than half of new Ozempic and Mounjaro users didn’t have Type 2 diabetes.
Scientists are calling for more clinical trials to pin down the full effects of weight-loss drugs on muscle loss in different demographics.
“The only studies that have been done have looked at people living with obesity or Type 2 diabetes,” said Green. “That makes it all the more concerning for those using weight-loss drugs in an ad hoc or unregistered way.”
