Handy tools for green fingers
It’s time to prune, lop, and spruce up your lawn, weed beds and borders. Spring is one of the busiest times of the year for gardeners, so you’re sure to have your work cut out. But what about your toolkit? Here are some essential purchases to help make light work of freshening up your outdoor space ...
Gardena Combisystem Gutter Cleaner, £19.99, Homebase
Fed up with climbing ladders to get to the leaves and debris that have clogged up your gutters? Gardena has come up with a new gutter cleaner attachment for its telescopic combisystem.
With sturdy bristles on one side, and a powerful plastic scraper on the other, you can connect it to the garden hose to achieve better results with water. You need to buy the combisystem telescopic rod for the gutter cleaner separately (it comes in two lengths, from £35.95).
The rod can also be used with other attachments, including rakes, a fruit picker, broom and saw.
Wilkinson Sword Ultralight Bypass Loppers, £29.99, wilkinsonsword-tools.co.uk
Bypass loppers are perfect for green wood, as they give precise, clean cuts and avoid damaging the branch, with blades that are designed to pass each other smoothly as they cut.
If you’re looking for a tool that is especially lightweight, without sacrificing any cutting power, these Ultralight Bypass Loppers are the ideal option.
Made from strong yet light materials, this lopper can provide the power you need, while weighing in at just 450g – half the weight of its traditional counterpart. They minimise physical effort and increase efficiency of each cut, and the bypass non-stick coated blade is perfect for young, green wood with the 25mm cutting capacity providing a precise, defined cut.
Bosch Cordless Secateur Easyprune, £85 shop, bosch-do-it.com
Take the strain out of pruning with these power-assisted secateurs. The Easyprune cuts through branches with a diameter of up to 25mm effortlessly. A finalist in the RHS garden product of the year award at the Chelsea Flower Show, the secateurs make light work of branches and don’t jam if they’re a little too thick. The power only kicks in when the handles are actively squeezed together, as they would be with conventional secateurs and when the tool senses resistance.
Burgon & Ball Wonder Weed Puller, £19.99, burgonandball.com
be used standing up, without bending or stooping. To remove a weed in the lawn, insert the three rust-resistant stainless steel prongs into the ground to surround the weed crown, rotate the puller through 360 degrees and pull to remove with its root intact.
Spear & Jackson Neverbend Stainless Steel Weed Fork, Hand Trowel and Transplanting Trowel, £13.49 each, Amazon.co.uk
trowel set for the new season, to help you weed and plant with ease. This Neverbend range offers value for money, with sturdy blades made from mirror-polished stainless steel offering protection against rust and minimal soil adhesion.
They are finished with durable weatherproofed hardwood handles to extend their lives. You can’t guarantee they will never bend – after all, every tool has its breaking point – but they are better than average for the price.