Basic Gardening Tools

When it comes to gardening tools, buy the best you can afford. A well-made tool will last longer, be kinder to plants, and make the job easier for you. Gardening experts advise checking the quality of the metalwork and paying attention to the way parts are joined together. The blade or metal head of the tool should be welded to a socket that fits up around the handle, not jammed directly into the handle where it will soon come loose. Avoid buying tools with painted wooden handles because the paint is there to disguise inferior wood (and it will also chip off on sweaty palms). Before you buy any tool, grab and use it as you would in the garden. Seize the trowel and twist your wrist as you might when scooping a planting hole, put your foot on the top of the spade as if you were digging, and so forth. This is the only way to find out if the tool is the right size for your height, your hand, and your strength.

1. Pruner. For cutting back flowers and plants and pruning deadwood and twigs. Buy the best you can afford because cheap ones don’t cut cleanly and can damage branches, causing rot or disease over time.

2. Trowel. For digging out weeds and planting flowers and bulbs. You may want two: narrow for weeding and planting bulbs, and broad for flowers and seedlings.

3. Spade. A spade is one of the most important garden tools you’ll buy. This long-handled tool is used for planting trees and shrubs, making trenches along garden beds (for drainage), and many other digging and earth-turning jobs.

4. Knife. A one-piece knife with a serrated blade and metal handle—a steak knife is perfect—may turn out to be your favorite gardening tool. It will dig weeds with pinpoint accuracy and plunge through the soil neatly in narrow spaces. (Don’t use a wooden-handled steak knife with a flexible blade because it won’t be strong enough.)

5. Leaf rake. A bamboo rake is inexpensive and gentle on your grass and plants.

6. Watering can. Good-quality cans will come with a brass tip, called a rose. A good rose allows for precise and delicate watering.

7. Gloves. Some gardeners turn up their nose at gloves because they get between your hand and the soil. If you have sensitive skin, or value your fingernails, that’s precisely the reason you might want to wear them.

8. Straw hat. It should go without saying (but it doesn’t) that you don’t want to be working in the garden for a couple of hours without protection from the heat and sun.

9. Large plastic trash can. Buy a light one so you can drag it around easily as you move through the garden digging weeds, pruning, and cutting away annuals. Plastic bags can blow away, and reopening them every time you throw something away is an annoying waste of time.