Looking for the best hydroponic garden for your classroom or school? Start the year with a Gardyn setup designed to grow alongside your students.

A new school year brings new lesson plans, new students, new goals, and plenty of opportunities to make learning more hands-on.

If you are looking to bring STEM, science, nutrition, sustainability, or agriculture education to life this year, an indoor hydroponic garden can give students something they can see, touch, measure, experiment with, and grow themselves.

But with different Gardyn bundles, accessories, professional development options, and curriculum available, where should you start?

We put together this guide to our back to school Gardyn favorites to help educators find the right setup for their classroom, STEM program, or school.

Why Gardyn for the school year?

Gardyn transforms just 2 square feet of classroom space into a living learning lab. The Gardyn Home indoor garden system can grow up to 30 plants indoors without soil, a dedicated greenhouse, or a sunny window. Built-in LED lighting and automated care make it possible to grow throughout the school year, while Kelby, the Gardyn AI plant assistant, helps monitor plants and keeps classrooms on track with care reminders.

With Gardyn, students learn from living systems, which supports study in:

• Plant science and biology

• STEM and STEAM

• Environmental science

• Sustainable agriculture

• Nutrition and food education

• Mathematics and data collection

• Engineering and technology

• Career and technical education

• Entrepreneurship

• Hands-on, project-based learning

And because Gardyn is designed for indoor growing, students can observe plant growth throughout the school year, regardless of the weather outside. You can see more about how the Gardyn indoor garden system works, or explore the full Gardyn school gardens program.

So, which setup is right for your school?

What happens over school breaks?

Best for: every educator who has wondered who takes care of it over winter break

It is usually the first question teachers ask, and it is a fair one. A classroom sits empty for a week at Thanksgiving, two weeks in winter, and a week in spring. Gardyn was built for people who leave.

Vacation Mode is a membership feature you turn on from the Gardyn app. It shifts the system to a reduced light schedule that slows plant growth to a near standstill while keeping plants healthy and hydrated. Plants use far less water in this state. When you return, you switch it off and the system goes back to its previous light and watering schedule, and growth picks up where it left off.

A few practical notes for classroom use:

• Vacation Mode is designed for absences of roughly 5 to 14 days, which covers Thanksgiving, winter break, and spring break at most schools

• Plants need to be at least 30 days old before it can be turned on, so plan the first grow cycle to start early in the term

• Before a break, harvest everything that is ready, clear out any microgreens or baby greens completely, and cover empty spots with Gardyn caps

• For breaks at the longer end, having someone stop by once to top off the tank keeps things comfortable

• Kelby keeps monitoring throughout, so a teacher can check on the classroom Gardyn from a phone from anywhere

Summer is different. Vacation Mode is not intended for absences longer than about two weeks, so the long break needs a plan rather than a setting. Most schools do a full harvest at the end of the year and restart in the fall, which makes a natural closing unit: harvest everything, clean the system, shut it down, and plan next year's grow. Where summer programming continues, the Gardyn Home dolly makes it straightforward to roll the system to a summer school classroom or send it home with a teacher.

Best fit: any classroom, and especially schools where the Gardyn will sit unattended across several breaks in a single school year.

The Most Popular Plus Bundle: the best all-around classroom setup

Best for: educators who want an all-in-one Gardyn experience with curriculum included

If you are shopping for your first classroom hydroponic garden and want more than just the growing system, the Most Popular Plus Bundle is a great place to start.

The bundle includes everything in the Most Popular Bundle, plus accessories that give educators more flexibility in how they use their Gardyn, along with a one-year curriculum license for your selected grade band.

What is included?

• Gardyn Home indoor garden system

• 30-plant yCube starter set

• Gardyn Sprout Nursery

• Hydroboost

• Gardyn plant food

• Gardyn Home dolly

• Access to Kelby, the Gardyn AI plant assistant

• 10 free plants per month

• Vacation Mode

• Gardyn caps

• Gardyn plant trellis

• Gardyn plant belts

• Gardyn yCovers

• One-year curriculum license for K to 5 STEAM, 6 to 8 STEM, or 9 to 12 STEM

• Free shipping

• 2-year warranty

Why educators love it

The Most Popular Plus Bundle is designed for schools that want to start growing and start teaching at the same time.

The included trellis and plant accessories make it easier to experiment with different plant varieties and growing habits, while the curriculum license gives teachers a ready-made way to connect the Gardyn experience to classroom learning.

Best fit: first-time Gardyn educators, STEM teachers, science classrooms, and schools looking for a turnkey hydroponic education solution.

To start a quote for the Most Popular Plus Bundle, click here.

The Gardyn Harvest Kit: connect growing to eating

Best for: nutrition, food education, and classrooms that want students to taste what they grow

Growing is only half the lesson. The Gardyn Harvest Kit gives classrooms the tools to move from plant to plate, which turns a growing project into a food and nutrition experience students remember.

Pairing a harvest experience with your Gardyn setup supports nutrition education, food literacy, and the kind of hands-on tasting that changes how students think about vegetables. For classroom ideas, see our Gardyn school lunch and snack recipes.

Best fit: elementary classrooms, nutrition and family and consumer sciences programs, and any classroom running a plant to plate unit.

Gardyn Lab: build a bigger STEM growing experience

Best for: schools, STEM labs, CTE programs, and districts that want multiple Gardyn systems for experimentation and collaboration

If one Gardyn can become a living learning lab, Gardyn Lab can turn multiple systems into an entire STEM growing environment.

Designed for schools that want to go beyond a single classroom setup, Gardyn Lab gives educators the opportunity to use multiple Gardyn devices for side-by-side experiments, student collaboration, plant science investigations, and larger growing programs.

With options for 3, 5, or 10 Gardyn systems, educators can create a setup that matches the scale of their program.

Why choose Gardyn Lab?

Multiple systems open up new possibilities for student-led learning. Instead of every student observing the same growing environment, students can investigate what happens when conditions or variables change.

For example, students can:

• Compare different plant varieties

• Conduct controlled experiments

• Collect and analyze plant-growth data

• Investigate environmental variables

• Explore water and resource efficiency

• Work in teams to manage individual systems

• Study controlled-environment agriculture

• Connect plant science to engineering and technology

• Explore careers in agriculture, food systems, and STEM

• Design experiments and present their findings

To see what this looks like at district scale, read how Howard County schools grow food with Gardyn.

Best fit: middle and high school STEM programs, CTE and agriculture programs, dedicated STEM labs, schools with multiple classrooms, and schools looking to build a larger hydroponic education program.

To learn more about the Gardyn Lab, click here.

Professional development: get teachers growing with confidence

Best for: new Gardyn educators, districts launching a program, and teachers who want hands-on training

A new classroom technology is much more valuable when educators feel confident using it.

That is why we recommend pairing your Gardyn setup with professional development training.

Rather than spending the first few weeks of school figuring everything out, professional development gives educators a chance to learn how Gardyn works and think through how it can fit into their instructional goals.

Training can help educators understand:

• How to get started with Gardyn

• How to manage everyday plant care

• How students can participate in device care

• How to use Gardyn as a classroom learning tool

• Ways to incorporate Gardyn into STEM instruction

• How to build student ownership and responsibility

• How to make the most of Gardyn throughout the school year

This is especially valuable for schools where multiple educators will interact with the Gardyn, or where a teacher is introducing hydroponics to their classroom for the first time. We offer flexible packages for single or multiple days.

To learn more about Gardyn professional development, click here.

Middle school STEM curriculum: turn your Gardyn into a living lab

Best for: grades 6 to 8 STEM, science, and project-based learning

For middle school educators, Gardyn can become a hands-on platform for exploring questions that do not have to stay inside a textbook.

Students can investigate how plants respond to different conditions, collect data, identify patterns, develop hypotheses, and use evidence to explain what they observe. The Gardyn 6 to 8 STEM curriculum is designed to help educators connect the growing system to structured learning experiences.

For classroom-ready starting points, see our 9 easy ways to incorporate Gardyn into your STEM curriculum.

Best fit: middle school STEM teachers looking for hands-on, cross-curricular learning that students can revisit throughout the school year.

To learn more about Gardyn curriculums, click here.

High school STEM curriculum: take growing into deeper investigation

Best for: grades 9 to 12 STEM, biology, environmental science, agriculture, and career-focused programs

High school students can take the Gardyn experience a step further.

At the high school level, a Gardyn can become a platform for experimentation, data analysis, sustainability studies, controlled-environment agriculture, and real-world problem solving.

The Gardyn 9 to 12 STEM curriculum gives educators a framework for connecting the system to more advanced learning.

Students can explore questions such as:

• What environmental conditions affect plant growth?

• How does changing one variable influence another?

• How can we use data to improve growing outcomes?

• How does controlled-environment agriculture work?

• How can technology help address food-access challenges?

• What role could indoor agriculture play in the future of food?

• How can we design more sustainable food systems?

Gardyn has long been used to introduce students to concepts connected to controlled-environment agriculture, plant science, IoT technology, engineering, and mathematics.

For high school programs, that makes the Gardyn more than a classroom garden. It can become a living platform for STEM investigation and career exploration.

Best fit: high school STEM, biology, environmental science, agriculture, CTE, and sustainability programs.

To learn more about Gardyn curriculums, click here.

So, which Gardyn setup is right for your school?

Not every school needs the same setup. Here is a quick way to think about your options:

Ready to grow this school year?

If Gardyn is on your back to school list, now is a great time to get started. Request a quote and our team of education partners will put together a plan aligned with your program's goals. If funding is the next hurdle, start with our 6 tips for securing a grant for Gardyn in your classroom.