If I Were Building My Gardening Kit From Scratch, Here’s Where I’d Splurge and Save

How many hours do you spend in the garden, trowel in hand? If you calculate on a cost per use basis, a quality trowel still offers great value for your hard-earned bucks. A transplanting trowel typically costs a little more than a standard model, but it's well worth it. I use mine to do pretty much everything in the garden, besides transplanting. Its blade is still sufficiently concave to carry a decent amount of soil but the narrower shape lets me rootle about in congested pots and borders, and the pointed tip sinks easily into soil. The depth marks come in handy, too.

This one is made of titanium-coated stainless steel that’s rust-resistant, so it won’t hurt when you leave it outside. And if you’re thinking that this pricetag is pretty low for a splurge item, that’s because, when you find a super-comfy trowel, you should immediately buy two more. Then you don’t have to worry when you inevitably lose one – or even two – in the border!

Your garden fork is put under an immense amount of pressure, especially if you have heavy clay soil in your garden, and you’re going to have to pay handsomely for that strength, right? Wrong! Standard forks are used in so many environments from farms to stableyards that they’re very competitively priced.

This design has a one-piece forged steel forkhead and a fibreglass handle that’ll withstand high stress and impact. It’s light for its strength, too, weighing in at just 4.85 pounds. The angled handle makes prolonged use less tiring, and an anti-slip grip cuts down on blisters. If you only use your fork from time to time, there’s really no need to spend more.

Call me a softie but I want my faithful garden spade to be a thing of beauty, bringing me just as much joy as the friendly robin who joins me for a worm hunt whenever I start digging. But if that digging isn’t going to be a chore, the shovel needs to be as practical as it is pretty, and I’m willing to pay for that pleasure.

I find a pointed shovel sinks into soil so easily that it’s immensely satisfying. If I’m digging in a border, that clean slicing action reduces soil disturbance all around, and the angled blade even cuts through established patches of grass. It’s useful for dividing perennials, too. Many spades with pointed blades are annoyingly small, but this one has a blade that, at not-quite-seven inches across, is plenty wide enough to lift soil. With a 10-year guarantee, it weighs in at a very manageable 3.84 pounds, even though the handle is made of ash.

I’ll be handing this down to my grandkids when I’m done with it.

You can spend a small fortune on gardening gloves and believe me, over the years I absolutely have. But the gloves I reach for time and time again aren’t the beautiful floral-print or leather-palmed mitts that sit forgotten in the greenhouse. No, the gloves I love are these, and look at that price.

Breathable with a flexible but grippy rubber coating, they’re tough enough for any garden job but still sufficiently thin to feel what you’re doing. And when you’re done, you can throw them in the washing machine, so they never develop that fusty, musty in-the-shed smell. They come in different colors, and there’s a model for men, too.

If I had to name my top 10 favorite things in the world (even when I include my kids), my hand pruners would make the list. And out of all my gardening tools, this is my biggest splurge. A really good pair of hand pruners are beautifully balanced and sit comfortably in your palm, requiring very little effort to maneuver. And finding some that suit you perfectly is no different from trying on a pair of shoes – you need to go to the garden center and physically hold different types in your hand to discover what fits best.

I’m a big fan of Felco Pruning Shears because they come in various sizes to fit small, medium and large hands, you can choose if you want a rotating lower handle or not, and there are specific models for left- and right-handed folk. My go-to pair are these small, lightweight shears because they make pruning so effortless. The carbon steel blades stay sharp, can be resharpened time and time again, and are replaceable – I suspect these hand pruners will last longer than my marriage will.

I don’t know about you, but my loppers only see the light of day once or twice a year. So I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend a fortune on an all-singing, all-dancing pair. The steel blades on these comfortably cut stems up to 1½ inches in diameter and that’s enough for me: if the branch is bigger than that, it’s easier to tackle the job with a saw anyway.

They come with a lifetime guarantee as standard, and I appreciate their shock-absorbing bumpers and soft-grip handles that save your hands from that awful thwack when loppers finish the cut on a particularly tough branch. Why would I pay more?

Yes, I know this is a lot of money for a weed puller, but I reckon getting the weeding done without sore knees and an aching back is priceless. And I realise it’s a stretch to say that this ingenious tool makes weeding fun, but it really does!

You simply push the tool around the weed, press the foot pedal so the four serrated stainless steel blades grip the roots, and lever the handle back. And hey presto, that weed is history! The best bit though? The push function ejects the evicted weed and sends it flying, setting up a game of target practice with your trug. It works in gravel and lawns as well as soil, the long handle means there’s no bending down, and it weighs a little over 2 pounds.

Why would you spend $30 on a dibble to do a job that any old stick could essentially do? I much prefer this functional plastic dibble to the more traditional T-bar designs made of wood and metal, because the handle is so comfy. The measuring scale on its side helps me punch holes of equal depth for even sowing, and the color means I don’t lose it every other minute.

Whenever I buy bulbs, I overbuy. And I love buying bulbs. Planting them, though? That’s quite another matter. They sit in their paper bag on the kitchen table for weeks until the bulb-planting window is practically shut, before I'm forced into action. Spending hours on my hands and knees using a manual bulb planter to create holes in soggy fall soil is not my idea of fun. Using an auger, though, is.

After buying 100 – yep, you read that correctly – Allium sphaerocephalon bulbs, I was as reluctant to plant them as I was to try spelling their name correctly. Idly browsing Amazon at 4am, I chanced across this long-handled planting auger that slots into any ⅜” hex drive drill and does all the work for you. I had those bulbs planted in under an hour.

Lots of people prefer garden scissors to hand pruners for deadheading, but they’re one of those ‘optional extra’ bits of gardening kit that carry a hefty premium. These little 4½ inch pruning scissors, however, are easy on the wallet. Their simple but sturdy design means the sharp blades spring open after every cut, avoiding hand fatigue, and they weigh just over two ounces.

Although they’re designed for pruning bonsai trees, they’re just as good at deadheading, removing unwanted buds, snipping small stems when arranging cut flowers, and harvesting herbs. And if you're looking for a little gift for a gardener friend and don't want to break the bank, there's nothing better.