Get your garden started | part 2: the right tools

What's useful and what's a waste of your money

This garden guide is the second in an 8-part series I will be releasing over the next month. It covers the essentials of starting a successful garden. The 8 guides will be available to all paying subscribers and members of the Wild Garden club, and there will be some previews and sneak peeks for free subscribers. Want to access all my garden guides, tours and recipes? Click the button below to upgrade your membership.

---

Hello and welcome back to the How to get your garden started series that I will be sharing with you over the next four weeks. This is a simple, pared-back series that covers the topics that I think are essential when starting a garden. Think of it as a bit of a primer - a guide to the fundamental starting points to get you motivated and started in your garden this autumn.

If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on part one below:

Get your garden started | Part 1: the basics

And if you want to make sure you can access the full 8 parts in this series, you can upgrade your subscription to paid by clicking the button below. It’s also worth noting that if you subscribe now, the price of your subscription will always stay the same - it’ll never increase - even if the subscription fees do go up in the future :)

Now, onto part two - making sure you have the right tools for the job!

Get your garden started | part two

Like most things nowadays, there are near-endless options when it comes to selecting tools for your garden. And (like most things nowadays) it's easy to get sucked into believing you need a whole host of fancy gadgets in order to grow successfully. Codswallop! People are just trying to get you to buy their products.

There are only a few things that are truly useful in your garden.

Here's what I use.

Secateurs

Invest in a good pair and take better care of them than I do - try not to leave them out in the rain for days on end, and if you keep them well oiled and sharpened they’ll serve you well for years to come

A spade

I almost never use a shovel, a spade serves me just fine 99% of the time. In case you’re wondering what the difference is between a shovel and spade, shovels have a pointy end and are curved, meaning they can carry more soil. Spades have a straight end (which is often quite sharp) and they’re not curved (so they don’t hold as much soil). To be honest, I never use a shovel and only use my spade occasionally (e.g., when planting something big that needs a large hole) because I avoid digging or turning the soil in our garden as much as possible.

A trowel

A good trowel is, in my opinion, very tough and made of metal. And, if it has a wooden handle, it is a sturdy wooden handle. That said, I prefer all-metal trowels that are chunky and solid-looking. Don't go for the plastic ones, they will almost always break! Generally with trowels you get what you pay for, and it’s much better to spend your money on one good trowel, rather than burning your way through heaps of easily-broken cheapies