GIFTS FOR gardeners
THE CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER IN GREEN-FINGERED GIFTS
Nobody ever gives me gifts for the garden. This is because, a friend told me, it would be like choosing a dress for Karen Walker. You’d worry it would never be right. Not true in my case, I promise.
Actually, I don’t have a big appetite for garden gifts, so if you’ve been searching the internet for something really clever, please don’t buy me a motorised garden seat I can summon with a button on my trowel, a bluetooth speaker disguised as a snapdragon, or an app. Any sort of app.
I’d rather have a copper rain gauge because our hideous plastic one has gone cloudy, and a mason bee house to persuade mason bees not to live inside the keyholes of our door handles.
I would also like a metal mailbox near the yet-to-be-constructed vegetable garden. No, it won’t be for receiving mail – who wants to open bills when you’re weeding? That’s adding insult to injury. It will be for storing my secateurs, trowel, gloves, scissors, twine and discarded plant labels. It’ll save me trudging up to the shed, which I am convinced is moving further and further away from the house, to stash the tools at the end of the day, and back again to collect them in the morning.
You may think a letterbox
(or some other small-ish metal container) will look ugly in the garden, but it won’t. Something upcycled or repurposed with a bit of creative flair is perfect for a rustic garden and a smart, steel letterbox will sit nicely in a contemporary setting.
I also have my eye on a tall, skinny metal locker that’s languishing in our local junk shop. It’s a bit rusty and its industrial off-white paint is past its use-by, but a black-satin spray bomb and some timber facings will give it a new lease of life. It’ll accommodate spades,
rakes and hoes, and longhandled pruners.
I’d also like a mirror, please. Mirrors are very useful in garden design for expanding spaces, accentuating focal points and maximising light. Junk shops always seem to have heaps of mirrors and they’re easy to dress up with timber or tiles. If you want a modern, minimalist look, go for something tall, narrow and frameless. Don’t look in it after you’ve been weeding.
If, towards the end of your Christmas shopping, you run out of ideas, here’s something you can put together without much effort. Buy three classy, neutral-coloured ceramic pots in different sizes and plant them with dry-garden varieties. Silvery foliage always looks sophisticated and the colour will work with anything. It’s a great fallback pressie that never fails to please. After all, three’s the charm.