Guide to Successful Gardening

The Best Tools for Gardening

Whether you have acres of garden or just a few pots, you will need the best gardening tools for the job.  Hardware shops and garden centres usually carry a wide range of gardening tools from the fairly cheap to the very expensive.  Apart from considering your budget, the amount of use your tools will get should be a consideration when choosing.

If you have a lawn you will need a lawn mower.  Obviously size and type is dictated by the size of your lawn; you won’t need a sit-on mower for a few square metres of lawn.  Whatever size your lawn, you will need a lawn rake or an electric scarifier to remove any dead grass which is stopping the new grass from growing.  Long-handled shears are useful for keeping the edges neat or you could use an electric strimmer or an edge cutting tool (half moon shape with a sharp blade).

Secateurs are a must, even if you have a veranda garden.  Many plants will grow in pots, particularly if they have speciality dwarf varieties and most will benefit from occasional pruning.  You will also need secateurs for removing dead flower heads.  You should look for a type which has a tension control and control for the distance of the blades from each other.  This is useful for different sized plant stems and also for different sized human hands.

For container gardening and small weeding jobs a hand fork is essential with a trowel for planting smaller plants.  You may want to buy a bespoke weeding tool as well.  These are about 20cm long and thin with a slightly curved blade for making sure that the whole weed root is removed.

For larger beds, a full sized fork and spade will be needed for turning the earth and digging holes for shrubs.  These tools will have to do some hard work so buy the sturdiest you can find.  A rake is also useful for smoothing over soil ready for planting flower or vegetable seeds and a hoe for weeding.

If you have hedges or trees, obviously good shears or an electric hedge trimmer will be needed as well as a pruning saw.  Pruners with a long extendable handle are useful for pruning trees which are out of normal reach.

In the end you should buy the best tools for gardening that you can afford and which suit the job you need them to do.

Liz Canham is a keen gardener who has exchanged the relative ease of gardening in Southern England for the trials of gardening on the Costa Blanca in Spain, where her garden is at a 45% angle on the side of a mountain. To take advantage of her experience visit her website, Gardening for All and get some great gardening tips.