If the only thing that grows in your garden is frustration, grab some apps: Craig Grannell has unearthed a few that will set you on the path to superb shrubs and fantastic flowerbeds

THE BASICS

■ Make lists

Your garden won’t thrive if you randomly lob bulbs at dirt. Research what’s best for your garden and when tasks should be done. Get to-do lists and shopping lists down, and then share everything if you don’t maintain the garden alone. At least then the plants will get watered and you’ll avoid buying four identical sheds.

■ Plan and design

If you’re very organised, properly map out the garden… or at least one section of it. Planter (from £free on Android and iOS) is great for vegetable patches –you drag and drop items to grids –and it works for flowers too. Avoid spending too much by keeping tabs on your budget with another free app: Spending Tracker.

■ Keep it going

Gardens refuse to look after themselves. Annoying. So set up recurring calendar events to ensure the basics get done: watering, weeding, giving stern looks to birds that snarf your grass seed. Need more motivation? Monitor progress in a habits app like Streaks (£4.99 on iOS) or Habit Tracker (£free with IAPs on Android).

■ Take records

Every garden is unique. Books and websites provide advice, but the specific things you try can make all the difference. So note down what you’ve done, and when. Once it becomes clear whether you’ve had a win or a disaster, you can keep refining your notes until you have a bestselling book and a famous TV show. Or at least a slightly nicer garden.

■ Use your camera

Every smartphone has a reasonably solid snapper, so use it. When working on designs, shoot your garden from above and scribble over it in one of the many apps that let you do this. And use photos to record the progress of plants and shrubs over time, compare how things are going from year to year, and share proof of just how green your fingers have become.

FIND THE SUN

■ Track the rays

If you’re new to a garden (or just haven’t looked up a lot), you need to know where the sun will be to avoid planting things in the wrong place. Use Sun Surveyor (£8.49 on Android, £9.99 on iOS) to visualise where it will be at any given time.

■ Change your view

Sun Surveyor gives you a 3D compass and a top-down view, but it can be more useful to explore a garden using the AR mode. Combined with the shadow length tool, this can quickly help you to fully optimise your garden.

CHECK CONDITIONS

■ Find perfect times

Sure, you can peruse weather forecasts and figure out the optimal moments for gardening. But why bother when Tomorrow.io (£free on Android and iOS) will do it for you? At-a-glance bar charts tell you all you need to know.

■ Monitor the air

While Tomorrow.io provides air quality data, it doesn’t dig into the finer details of pollen. Use Air Matters (£free on Android and iOS) to check whether you need a dose of antihistamine –or a dose of staying inside and watching Titchmarsh instead.

TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

■ Create a garden

Instead of dusty gardening tomes and notebooks, Planta (£free with IAPs on Android and iOS) bundles all your gardening needs into a single app. Kick things off by defining planting sites and using search to look through tips and info.

■ Pick your spot

If you’re out of ideas for a particular spot, tap it and the app will outline plants that might work there –whether it’s a shaded flowerbed or a sunlit windowsill.

■ Swap stories

Most of your online friends won’t give two hoots about how your shrub grew another 0.5cm last week. So swap tales and tips within Planta instead. And mull over the fact that its heart-shaped ‘like’ button really should have been a green thumbs-up.

IDENTIFY INTRUDERS

■ Grab Google

Found something weird in your garden? Or seen something elsewhere that you’d like to bring home? Use Google Lens to snap it. The app will kick off a search and tell you which bug is bugging you, or which flower has caught your fancy.

■ Call the experts

Google’s good, but a generalist. PlantNet (£free on Android and iOS) is a specialist. Give it a pic and say whether it’s a leaf, a flower, fruit or bark, and it should give you a name. If not, a built-in social network offers backup.

GARDENING GAMES

PRUNE

This “love letter to trees” is a game about the joy of cultivation in a grim and shadowy world. Strategic pruning coaxes your plant towards rare sunlight, whereupon it explodes into bloom. Hack off the wrong bit and you can try again.

£3.89 / Android £4.99 / iOS

SUNDAY LAWN

Although not nearly as bonkers as the game that inspired it (the superb Hover Bovver), Sunday Lawn is a fun enough mow-’em-up. You scoot about making gardens nicer while avoiding hedgehogs and dog turds.

£free (IAP) / Android 99p (IAP) / iOS

STARDEW VALLEY

We’re beyond faffing about with a few shrubs here… but hey, if you can maintain and manage a massive farm on your phone, you’ve a good chance of nursing a few carrots and tomatoes into existence in your actual garden.

£4.99 / Android, iOS