Stocking your garden tool rack
"It is a great mistake to think that any old tool will do. A good tool is a joy to use, and it lasts a lifetime; a bad one is a source of constant irritation and soon finds its way to the scrap-heap."
— Vita Sackville-West
When my husband and I first started gardening, we got the cheap plastic trowels and hand-held spades they sell in nurseries for our potted plants. What a mistake that was. Into the trash they went after a couple of months, as predicted by Ms. Sackville-West. We’ve been more intentional about buying garden tools since.
Within the limited space of a home garden, it takes ingenuity and physical work to create a hospitable environment for plants and trees to flourish. But you don’t really need anything other than your hands to start a garden. That said, good tools make it a pleasure and they save you a stupendous amount of time. Again, you don’t need powered tools at all - you can technically cut all your grass with a scythe. But with a good brushcutter, you’ll have the energy and time left over to focus on other crucial garden tasks.
Brands and technologies change, but the fundamentals are timeless. Well-made tools last. Well-designed tools are used more often. Well-maintained tools do their job well until it is time to retire them. Good tools are worth investing in and worth repairing.
Everyday gear.
Dressing appropriately for the garden is not simply a matter of style. Protection is non-optional if you don’t want to be itchy and rashy, get sunburnt, step on or get scratched by thorns, get bitten by ticks, or make contact with potentially poisonous things. If you know your garden well enough and are doing tame tasks, it is easier to wear whatever you want. But when in doubt, wear comfortable gloves, thick pants, a hat, and rugged shoes that protect but don’t restrict movement. Deep pockets come in handy for keeping small tools and seed packets.
A good, sturdy spade, trowel, and fork are staples in every garden. So is a watering can or a reliable garden hose. After all, the essence of gardening is putting plants in the ground or in containers and getting water to the roots. A pair of sharp shears that make clean cuts will help prevent the spread of diseases and pests, and encourage fresh growth.
A heavy-duty construction mortar pan or a wheelbarrow is indispensably handy for when you want to move soil, leaf mould, saplings, compost and all sorts of other things from one spot to another. Once plants make leaves, they’re going to drop them at some point. A rake makes it easy to manage lawns and garden beds, and to help tidy up so you enjoy spending time in your garden.
Once-in-a-while tools.
There are some tasks that only happen once every few weeks or months in a garden, but need as much consistency as the everyday jobs. For instance, weeding never ends. Unlike garden plants, weeds need very little handholding to prosper.
To prevent your garden from being overrun by pernicious invasives, don your wearables and use a hand weeder (human-powered, very slow), or an electric weed whacker (faster, but batteries run out fast too), or a fossil-fuel brush cutter (more torque, longer weeding time, higher maintenance). If you have big, flat, grassy land without a lot of rocks and stones, a lawn mower can make quick work of weeding, but it’s not versatile enough to get into tight spaces.
When planting trees, you need a hole in the ground that’s a couple of feet deep. A shovel can handle it, if you’re into back-bending labour, or you can get a manual or powered augur to spare the spine. A sawzall or a hand saw helps with pruning larger branches as trees grow. Finally, if the temperature hits the high thirties in celsius and crescendoes into the forties as summer wears on as it does in my garden, a shade net propped up on a light frame made of bamboo or even just sticks and positioned over the plants is a life saver.
Again, you don’t really need expensive tools to have a nice garden. If you’re very early in the process and you’re unsure about how much you’re willing to spend on all this, just get your hands dirty. You can always come back to the decision once you’ve crossed a threshold of garden activity. You will be needing some tools then.