Best Gardening Tools | Standard Evening

Now that the activity in the garden is decreasing a bit – unless you plant some fall bulbs – it’s a good time to take stock of your kit.

Most gardeners in London have a relatively small space, but you still need the right tools to make the most of it. And if you are new to a garden, then you need to think about the basics before you get started.

It’s a bit like buying for a kitchen – there are some basics you can’t live without, and there are optional extras that help with your particular predilections (not everyone will need a teepee). with sweet peas but they’re nice if that’s your fancy). With garden tools like with kitchen kits, it’s usually a false economy to go with the cheapest you can buy. Litter pruners won’t work over time and can damage plants you cut with them.

Here are some of my favorites.

Okay, these aren’t exactly tools, but they are a must have for any gardening job. They’re leather, tough, and thick enough to handle brambles and thorns. I’ve had countless inexpensive garden gloves that actually disintegrated on me: I couldn’t function without these. Honorable mention also goes to the Kew by Spear & Jackson Gardening Gloves which are available in either pink or green.

It’s supposed to be for potted plants, and it certainly allows it to slide inside a pot, but I actually use it for weeding and planting in general, like a normal trowel. It’s excellent: very robust and versatile.

It’s not often that you can say your gardening tool is a thing of beauty, but that’s because you might not have come across these downright beautiful shears. The five-inch blades and spring action make them easy to use, and they’re soft and heavy enough in the hand. This is for a nifty cut and it obviously works great for flowers too. It comes, like all traditional Japanese things, in attractive packaging.

The Japanese have an ancient and refined horticultural tradition and you have to reckon with their tools. These pruners are shiny, made from the finest Japanese steel, and the sharp blades make pruning a cinch. After so many failed secateurs, it’s perfection.

Hedge shears are a deeply unglamorous kit, but they are lightweight, efficient, and self-sharpening. Of all the chores that can be made much, much easier with decent tools, hedge trimming is about pruning. Hand shears are, for all the grafts involved, much easier to control than rough electric shears.

Nice name, but what, you will ask me, what is a widger? It’s a nifty little device for pricking between seedlings to lift and pull them apart, and once you’ve tried this particular job and destroyed countless delicate root systems, you realize he’s your best friend. It tapers off and you can use each end of this teaspoon to extract your seedlings and poke holes in the ground for planting.

There are countless garden trowels that do a really good job, but for the chic factor, a Hori-Hori knife gives you bragging rights. It is a Japanese trowel with a point, stronger than a normal trowel and terribly useful for weeding and planting bulbs. Manufacturers warn that the charred steel blade (which runs through the handle) can break if misused, so read their usage tips. It comes with a canvas case but for even more chic you can get a leather one.

If you only have a few bulbs to plant, a trowel will do, but if you have a lot, consider this simple bulb planter. It’s like an apple corer, removing a plug of earth at once to be able to place the bulbs in the hole. It’s sturdy, with charred steel and an ash handle. If you plant hundreds of them, go for a long-handled version.

A cat is a cat, you say? Not so. This excavator is a bit shorter than a normal excavator, so convenient for the confined spaces of London. It has a long stainless steel head for its size. It’s not particularly light but it’s sturdy. And given that this is the tool that you will probably use more than any other, it is an investment.

This recommendation falls under the Do As I Say category, as I suck at sharpening things like pruners, but like cleaning and oiling them at intervals, it makes a difference to their life and tools. blunt ones are dangerous. This is a weird pencil sharpener, but it works; the alternative is a flat sharpener or a whetstone (Niwaki makes an owl).