Five garden hand tools a beginner actually needs
You need about five hand tools, not a shed full
Most people starting a garden buy either almost nothing and make do with a kitchen spoon, or they buy a boxed set of 15 pieces where 10 of them never come out of the box. The useful middle is about five tools, each one doing a single job properly, and past that you're buying storage problems rather than capability.
These are the five I'd put in someone's hands, and I've said what to look for on each rather than just naming a thing, because the difference between a tool you keep and a tool you replace is usually one detail.
1. A hand trowel
This is the one you'll pick up every single time you go outside, so it's worth getting a decent one. It digs the hole and backfills it afterwards, and it's what you'll scoop potting mix out of the bag with.
The detail that matters is where the blade meets the handle. A trowel pressed out of thin steel with a tang riveted into a plastic grip will bend at that joint the first time you lever it against a rock, and in our soil around here you'll find the rock. Look for one forged in a single piece, or at least one with a solid collar, and hold it before you buy it so you can feel whether the handle suits your hand.
2. Bypass pruners
Bypass is the important word. A bypass pruner has two curved blades that pass each other like scissors and cut cleanly through living wood, whereas an anvil pruner crushes the stem against a flat plate, which is fine on dead wood and bruises anything still growing.
Buy bypass, and wipe the sap off the blade when you've finished rather than putting them away sticky. A pruner that gets cleaned will outlast three that don't, and sharpening is a job we can send out for you if it gets past a quick touch up.
3. A folding pruning saw
The tool nobody buys and everybody should. There's a gap between what pruners can manage, which is roughly thumb thickness, and what needs a chainsaw, and almost all shrub work lives in that gap.
A folding saw cuts on the pull stroke, so it does the work for you rather than binding the way a carpentry saw does in green wood. It folds into the handle and lives in a back pocket, and it turns a 20 minute wrestle with the secateurs into about 10 strokes.
4. A hand weeder
A weeder is a narrow forked blade on a short handle, and its job is getting the whole taproot out of a dandelion or a dock rather than snapping the top off so it comes back in a fortnight.
Push it in alongside the root, lever gently, and the plant lifts out in one piece. It's also the tool that saves your knees, because it reaches into a bed without you having to crawl into it.
5. Something to water with properly
A watering wand or an adjustable nozzle is the last one, and it's the one that quietly decides whether your seedlings live. A hose on full pressure will flatten a punnet of seedlings and wash the mix off their roots, and a gentle rose setting won't.
Get one with a shut off at the handle so you're not walking back to the tap every time, and you'll water more often because it stopped being annoying.
What you can skip for now
Loppers and a garden fork both matter eventually, and neither of them matters in the first season unless you're digging a new bed. Borrow those or buy them when the job turns up. Gloves are worth having from day one, and a cheap pair that fits beats an expensive pair that doesn't.
Shop related products
- Brunnings Seed Raising Mix 5L. Fine mix so the seedlings you plant with that trowel actually come up.
- Brunnings Vermiculite 5L. For covering seed and holding moisture in a punnet.
- Brunnings Potting Mix 70L. The bag most of a beginner garden starts in.
- D.T. Brown Lettuce All Year seed. An easy first sowing while you work the tools out.
Did you know the hand tools themselves live in the garden centre in the shop rather than on the website. What we carry:
- Gardenmaster hand trowels, bulb trowels, hand weeders and hand cultivators
- Cyclone bypass pruners and floral snips
- A Cyclone folding pruning saw, the one in section 3 above
- Bypass loppers in both brands, including a telescopic one
- A rack of Cyclone replacement handles for rakes, shovels, hoes and mattocks, which is usually cheaper than buying the whole tool again
Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf, or have a look through the garden centre range online.
Read next
- How to store garden tools in a small shed
- How to start your first vegetable garden
- How to grow vegetables in clay soil
I own four trowels, which tells you something about how well I look after the first three.
Cheers,
Candeece
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