THE BEST GARDEN TOOL is the one that gets used. I took a different approach when compiling this year’s Gifts for Gardeners list and asked several expert and avid gardeners to recommend their favorite garden implement.
● Michelle Rau is a certified professional horticulturist and an ISA-certified arborist with a degree in sustainable landscape management. These days, in addition to working for a landscaping firm, Rau teaches in the Edmonds College horticulture program, where she tells students: “You are the greatest tool. Protect your body, maintain your strength, stretch, strengthen your muscles and don’t overexert yourself. It’s not a race. Ask for help if a situation doesn’t feel right.” Of course, having the right tool is imperative for body-wise gardening. Whether she’s transplanting a rhododendron, planting bulbs in root-heavy soil or dividing perennials, Rau calls her transplanting spade “one of the best tools ever.” A sharp blade handles roots, while a short handle allows you to leverage your weight when digging. Sturdy steps at the top of the blade provide sure footing.
● Everyone’s favorite gardener, Ciscoe Morris, can’t imagine gardening without his short reach cut and hold pruners, which allow him to reach into a plant to make a cut, then hold onto the stem until he releases it. Morris says his version, which has a 2-foot-long aluminum shaft and bypass blades that can handle cuts up to 3/8-inch thick, “is great for deadheading all kinds of plants without having to bend over, get on your knees or walk into beds and compact the garden soil.”
● Bill Thorness, author of “Cool Season Gardener: Extend the Harvest, Plan Ahead, and Grow Vegetables Year Round,” routinely reaches for a big digging fork with a stainless-steel head. He considers forged construction “essential” and recommends avoiding models where the business end of the tool is bolted to the handle, calling it a “weak point that is destined to fail.”
● England-born Karen Chapman says she “grew up with a trowel in her hand.” Today the author, speaker, garden designer and educator is known for her artistic, foliage-forward plant compositions and garden problem-solving; her book “Deer-Resistant Design” was published in 2019. Chapman’s favorite go-to tool is an English hand fork, which she uses for teasing roots from rootbound plants as well as weeding and removing select plants from container plantings with the least root disturbance.
● Local landscape designer and educator Stacie Crooks specializes in creating drought-tolerant gardens filled with color and texture. Like Rau, Crooks relies on a transplanting spade, amped up with serrated edges and a notched head that, she claims, “cuts roots like butter.”
● Suzette Birrell is a passionate plantswoman whose home garden is filled with choice perennials, shrubs and roses. Birrell’s tool of choice is a multipurpose curved Japanese saw with a serrated blade that she uses to get at hard-to-reach weeds, cut back ornamental grasses and easily open bags of mulch. “I usually lose at least one a year,” she notes. “And I usually find one in the spring that’s been left under a shrub.” Fortunately, the sickle-shaped saw is economical and easy to replace.
● Christina Pfeiffer has spent decades working in public gardens, teaching and consulting as a professional horticulturist. Pfeiffer’s favorite tool is a handy saw-toothed sickle — and a can of red paint. The gardener has taken to painting her tool handles red to (hopefully) help keep track of them when she gets caught up in garden tending. Her favorite model has a 4.5-inch blade, which she puts to work “slicing weeds out of turf and garden beds, dividing perennials, and sawing roots when planting or repotting pot-bound plants,” as well as other routine garden harvesting and grooming tasks.
Lorene Edwards Forkner: is the author of the newly published “Grow Great Vegetables in Washington.” Find her at ahandmadegarden.com and at Cultivating Color on Substack.
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