If you buy all the gardening tools available at the garden center, you will quickly spend a lot of money and many of your new purchases will end up sitting unused in the shed. So, what gardening tools do you really need?
There's nothing worse than trying to garden with the wrong tools, or tools that are difficult to use. And since many gardening tools are used for planting, you need to have the right tools on hand to get your plants to look their best. At the very least, every gardener needs a really good shovel, fork and trowel, while serious gardeners can keep a shed stocked with tools for every gardening situation. This master gardener picks his garden essentials.
Here we'll introduce the basic gardening tools you'll need to care for your garden, as well as some handy tools for those who want to be fully equipped. Also, check out our guide to the best pruning tools for the best pruning shears, loppers and saws.
Every gardener needs a planting trowel. Whether you're working in a flower bed or vegetable patch, a trowel makes it easier to transplant seedlings or get small plants in the ground.
Look for one with a handle that's easy to hold; wooden trowels are an advantage here, as some trowels, especially plastic ones, have seams and joints that can quickly become sore after repeated use. A long “tang” (the part between the blade and the handle) might be a good idea; it means your knuckles won't get caught in the blade.
Border Spade T-Handle, Crocus by De Witt | Photo courtesy of Crocus
Best Border Spades
A shovel is essential if you need to dig a larger hole, or if you're digging into ground that a trowel won't fit into, and it's also essential for lifting plants to move them to another location or for dividing them. They come in a variety of sizes, but many gardeners find small 'border shovels' particularly useful for getting around crowded borders.
A heavy, full-sized shovel can get tiring after a while, especially if you're gardening in heavy soil, but if you have the stamina, it's a great choice if you do a lot of digging. Look for one with a strong, sturdy shaft, good quality metal, and a balanced weight between the head and shaft.
Top quality border spades: Crocus by De Witt
Best All-Around Border Spade: Greenman Carbon Steel Half-Bright Border Spade
The best garden fork
Forks are great for loosening compacted soil and preparing it for planting. If your soil is stony, a fork is much easier to use as it can get through the stones whereas a shovel would quickly get bogged down. You can also use it to mix soil improving mulch into the soil or to work and mix materials into a compost pile. It's especially good for pulling weed roots out of the soil. As with the shovel, look for good quality metal and a sturdy shaft that won't bend, but make sure it's weighted appropriately.
Ideal for high speed digging: Border Fork T-Handle – Crocus by De Wit
A sharp hoe is essential for vegetable growers in the spring and summer. You can use the hoe's blade to draw straight furrows for sowing seeds or flatten and make shallow furrows for sowing beans. But most of the time, you use the hoe to weed. As you push the hoe through the soil, the blade cuts through all the pesky annual weeds that pop up as soon as it warms up, and then the weeds wither and die on the soil surface. This saves you hours of manual weeding. It's important to look for a sharp blade, but be careful, some are very sharp.
Another essential tool for anyone growing their own vegetables is a rake, which is essential for breaking up clods of soil into a fine powder or “clod” suitable for sowing small seeds. If you're sowing flower seeds directly into flower beds or grass seed to start a new lawn, you'll also need a rake to prepare the soil into a suitable sowing surface.
Additionally, a spring-loaded rake or leaf rake can be useful, especially in the fall, to quickly collect fallen leaves.
Featured product: Hawkesbury leaf raker
Unless you're installing a permanent edging, everyone with a lawn needs a lawn edger (also known as a half-moon edger). Grass grows vigorously and can quickly spread into borders, paths and paving. Using a lawn edger at the start of the season to trim unruly or unruly edging will give your garden an instant boost in appearance. Thereafter, regular mowing with the lawn edger will help keep your new edging neat.
Lawn edgers are also useful if you need to lift up parts of your lawn (for example, to cut out bare areas of grass and fill in with new grass or to repair part of the edge of your lawn) or if you want to create new borders and cut and shape the grass.
Featured Products: Spear & Jackson Lawn Edging Tool Gardening Edge Cutter
You can use a hand fork to remove weeds and pull unwanted plants from the soil, but there are also many professional manual weeding tools that can be used for the same purpose. The criteria for choosing a hand fork are the same as for a transplant trowel: choose one with good metal quality and easy to hold. Many gardeners are fascinated by the Japanese tool “horihori”, which has a thin blade that can be pushed deep into the soil to pry up the entire root of the weed. Daisy grabbers with small notches are useful for removing individual weeds and are effective for deep-rooted plants. There are also tools such as pronged weeders, which look a bit like a tuning fork but are better for annual weeds. A hand hoe can also be used to quickly snip or pull up weeds.
Featured Product: Burgon & Ball Stainless Steel Weeding Fork
Best garden brooms and brushes
Most gardeners know that you don't need to be too tidy, but a little mess can create a habitat for garden wildlife, so a good clean-up is necessary from time to time. Whether you're using it to collect piles of fallen prunings or to clean the patio before a barbecue, a good broom that's neither too stiff nor too soft is a must.
