Many people I speak with these days are intent on simplifying and paring down — the pace of their lives, their possessions. A motto on my fridge reminds me: “Discard everything that is not useful, beautiful or loved.”
There are gifts that can contribute much to simplifying and making pleasantly comfortable the care of a garden. Useful and beautiful tools, ornaments and accessories add to the ease and joy of gardening and contribute to the mental and physical benefits that flow from this absorbing pastime. They are gifts of kindness.
Every time I embark on an indoor or outdoor gardening session, I am thankful for the equipment that smoothes the way to accomplishing what I want to do that day. Some of these items have been gifts. Here are some of them.
Tidy Tray
Anyone who does indoor potting and seeding would find a Tidy Tray indispensable. Mine is a gift from my son, about 20 years ago. It’s still like new, and is one of the most-used gardening aids I have.
Before a Tidy Tray came into my life, I used an old cafeteria type tray for indoor seeding and potting, which can be a messy business without a roomy tray with high enough sides to eliminate soil and water spills.
The three-compartment shelf that fits across the top of the tray is useful for holding seed packets, labels, small potting tools and more.
My Tidy Tray is always close at hand. It has been a wonderfully useful gift of kindness, and a beautiful thing.
Pruning tool
Hand pruners (secateurs) accompany me on every gardening session. In my large garden, I make many thousands of cuts with them every year. My Felco #6 secateurs have lasted in good working condition for around 15 years. They are designed for small hands. My hands aren’t small, but these pruners are very kind to them. They are small but mighty, indispensable and tough.
Tote
Weeding and cleaning up general garden debris are constant occupations, made easy with good weeding tools. A necessary adjunct is some sort of easily transportable bag to receive weeds and clippings destined for composting.
A tote I’ve had for years is a flexible reinforced plastic bag with conveniently large handles. These green bags come in three sizes. Alternatives are multi-use, colourful poly tubs, flexible and waterproof.
Gloves
Avid gardeners need regular glove replacements. I use gloves for everything except transplanting. I’m about to replace my worn pair with another snug but comfortable pair at my local hardware store. They have breathable knit backs and waterproof rubberized palms.
Sometimes, specialty gloves are called for when working with thorny plants such as roses and blackberries. Early in the year, I asked a good pruner I know to help with cutting back a dreadfully overgrown Mermaid climbing rose.
Mermaid produces a long season of large, single yellow roses, but the plant is armed with long, curved thorns. Part-way into the job, my pruning friend showed me his shredded gloves. My pair of long, sturdy “gauntlet” style gloves, perfect for protection against thorny invasions, were too small for him. He dashed home to retrieve his pair.
Weeders
I have a hoe and a long-handled claw-style cultivator-weeder, both of which I use for specific tasks, but the weeding implement I always have with me is a small hand tool with a two-sided head. One is a hoe and the other a pick-ended cultivator. It’s versatile, lightweight, durable — and a gift from a longtime gardening friend. Currently available is a similar two-headed hand tool called a “Culti-hoe.”
Useful diversions
Adding much to the pleasures of gardening are things that prompt us to stop and smile — a hummingbird darting from bloom to bloom, birds flitting about a feeder or splashing in a bath. Gifts that attract and nurture bird life are a bonus in gardens.
Amusing ornaments, especially when they have been gifts from well-loved people or are items associated with fond memories, foster pleasant pauses in a garden.
I’m thinking of a laughing Buddha, garden fairies and gnomes, and the “garden angel” in a planter by my front door.
On a table beside my back lawn sits a toothy dragon, a pottery sculpture created by my son in middle school. A small grinning piggy has long been stationed on shelving beside the greenhouse.
All are associated with memories and are beautiful in my eyes.
