My wife and I always wanted a real herb garden right in our kitchen — and when I planned my custom IKEA Sektion kitchen a couple of years ago, I built a niche specifically for a hydroponic smart garden. We love the smell, we love the look, and the convenience of grabbing fresh herbs while you cook is hard to beat. Winter or summer, you have 24/7 access to fresh herbs and vegetables. Here’s exactly how I designed the IKEA kitchen around it.
Designing a hydroponic garden niche into my IKEA Sektion kitchen
This is the part I’m proud of. When I laid out the kitchen, I planned one of the wall cabinets with a niche — a dedicated spot on the side of the cabinet run — specifically for the garden. Two details made it work.
First, I lined the niche with the same Cambria quartz I used for the countertops and backsplash. That does a few things at once: it ties the niche into the rest of the kitchen so it reads as finished and intentional rather than added on, it protects the cabinet from any water that spills off the garden, and it wipes clean in a second. Quartz in there just looks right — it belongs.
Second, I ran an outlet right below it, inside the cabinet, before anything was finished. So when the kitchen was done, the spot was already wired and waiting. That kind of planning ahead is the difference between something that looks built-in and something that looks added on later. If you’re laying out a kitchen from scratch, this is exactly the kind of thing worth mapping in advance — I sketch these details in the Homeject Kitchen Planner before anything gets built.
Choosing the right hydroponic smart garden
Once the kitchen was done, I started looking at what was out there — there are plenty of smart gardens now. I went with the Click and Grow Smart Garden, an indoor hydroponic system with built-in LED grow lights.
The one I have is roughly 24″ wide × 7″ deep × 16″ high. That 16 inches is the height of the light arm — worth noting, because the plants often grow taller than that, so plan your space accordingly. I bought mine on Amazon and I’ve been very happy with it.
How the Click and Grow hydroponic system works
It’s genuinely simple. There’s a water tank in the base, and the pods sit in plastic cups that drop into the tank. To fill it, you pull one cup and pour water in. There’s a small float on the left that acts as your water-level indicator — when it’s up, you’re full.
The pods come with the seeds already inside, so you don’t prep anything — open the pack, drop a pod into a cup, fill the water, turn on the lights. They usually come in packs of three. I buy mine from Click and Grow on the same Amazon store; I’ve heard people use other brands of pods, but I’ve always stuck with theirs.
The app and the lighting
Before you start, you download the app — that’s the “smart” part. You get a garden profile, and you can even name each plant, which is a nice touch. The lighting is proper targeted grow lighting, not ordinary LEDs — tuned specifically to grow plants fast and healthy. You set timers for how long the lights run; mine are around 16 hours a day, but you can adjust it. Once it’s set, the lights come on and off automatically. It just runs itself.
What grows best
I’ve grown basically everything they offer — basil, mint, oregano, dill, tomatoes, chili peppers. One tip I learned the hard way: I don’t fill every pod slot anymore. Basil and mint especially fill in fast and get bulky, and they crowd each other. Leaving a couple of slots empty gives them room to spread sideways, and it makes a real difference.
The regular herbs — oregano, mint, basil, dill — grow fast. Figure 30 to 40 days and you’ve got something worth eating. Tomatoes and hot peppers take longer, so plan for that. But when the tomatoes and peppers came in, everyone who saw them reacted the same way — little tomatoes and peppers growing right in the kitchen, in the middle of winter with snow outside. People love it.
The look
The niche is illuminated, so day or night it throws a nice ambient glow. The garden itself looks almost futuristic, and the white Click and Grow unit matches the white IKEA cabinets so well it looks like it was always meant to be there. I’m very happy with how it turned out.
A GoPro time-lapse
I set a GoPro above the garden and shot a time-lapse of the plants coming up. It’s oddly satisfying to watch them grow day by day — it goes fast. I’ve put the short clip below.
[YouTube time-lapse embeds here]
Maintenance is almost nothing
You keep the water topped up — I fill mine every two to three weeks, just a little. Pull a pod, pour, done. Everything else runs on its own. Every two to three months I pull the old pods, clean the tank and the top section, refill with fresh water and new pods, and start again. That’s the whole routine, and it keeps a garden going year-round.
The smell
I have to mention this — when the mint or basil is going, the whole kitchen smells incredible. It fills the room. It’s one of those things you don’t expect to appreciate as much as you do.
My recommendation
I’d strongly recommend some kind of garden in your kitchen. It’s healthy, it looks good, and it basically takes care of itself. Good luck with yours — and if you have questions, get in touch.
Gear I used
- Click and Grow Smart Garden — the indoor hydroponic unit I use
- Click and Grow plant pods (variety 9-pack) — herbs and vegetables
- GoPro HERO — what I used for the time-lapse
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