Posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
The countdown to Christmas has begun and it’s time to start thinking about what gardening gifts to buy for the greenfingered people in your life. To give you a helping hand, these are our picks of the pressies for this festive season:
Practical purchases
Lechuza have a range of polypropylene planters with integrated watering reservoirs which will suit many different garden styles. They are all smartly designed with ceramic or metallic finishes and are frost, UV and shatter resistant (a benefit over terracotta). Plus they won’t overheat your plants like metal planters can. The full range can be found on the Lechuza website and there are various stockists online and in local garden centres.
Spear and Jackson have launched a Kew Gardens Collection of garden tools, which combine durability (borne out by their 15 year guarantee) with a stylishly traditional appearance. There’s a wide range of tools available to suit all types of gardeners, from the more usual digging forks and spades to less commonplace rose bed rakes and mulch forks.
Little girls will love a flower press like the pretty one available from the Handpicked Collection. Make the gift even more special by adding in some cards and glue for them to turn their pressed flowers into works of art.
Anyone with an interest in flower arranging will appreciate a good pair of florists’ scissors and I love the Spear and Jackson ones sold in a robust, Union Jack adorned pouch, from Bradley’s Tannery.
Grow their own
Veg growers love to plant unusual varieties, so search out some heirloom and heritage seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue. I like the sounds of ‘Sweet Chocolate’ bell peppers, vibrant ‘Dragon Purple’ carrots and the oak leaf shaped leaves of ‘Flashy Butter Oak’ lettuces (well, I was bound to like that one!).
Make growing potatoes a bit easier by buying spud-lovers some potato planting bags. These don’t have to sit on the patio – dig a trench where you want to grow your potatoes, put the bags in it, then fill with soil and a seed potato. The potato grows naturally into the ground through the holes the bag, but when you come to harvest it you simply pull out the bag, saving all that digging. You can then store the potatoes in the bags (in a cool spot) until you’re ready to eat them. They can be purchased from LBS Garden Warehouse.
A perfect gift for a keen herb grower, or a lover of mint tea, is the tisanière tea set from Crocus, which combines mint seeds and the pot to brew up the resulting leaves.
Rocket Gardens have a range of ‘instant gardens’, so if you know someone who’s keen to start growing their own, this could be the perfect gift. They sell packs of ‘baby’ plants to suit areas from window boxes to large veg patches, delivered at exactly the right time to plant them. Included in their range is a ‘River Cottage’ collection of plants. If you’re not sure what to buy then they also sell gift vouchers, so the recipient can choose their own garden.
Whimsy
Thrive, a charity promoting the advantages of gardening for people with disabilities, have a selection of gardening-themed Christmas cards, including their exclusive ‘Christmas Thyme’ card.
If you have a gardener to buy for who’s also a football fan, then a football club gnome might be the perfect gift! Available from Amazon and other stockists, the gnomes are dressed in the colours of key premiership and national football teams.
For children of any age, the SnowBall Blaster will get everyone outside for the mother of all snowball fights! It hurls perfectly formed snowballs up to 30m and comes complete with a target…not that I believe anyone will be firing at that! Available from Amazon and other stockists.
Kneeling pads are useful to all gardeners, but some more so than others…I like the ones with ‘Beer please’ or ‘A nice cup of tea please’ printed on them in large print, perfect for waving hopefully towards the kitchen window when you’re feeling a bit parched from all that weeding! Available from Amazon and various other stockists.
Outdoor living
If you know someone with a balcony then the Elho Corsica Flower Bridge Table could be a great choice for them. It hangs neatly over the balcony and provides a stylish area for planting herbs or annuals, plus a table and tray for storage or simply somewhere to put your cuppa. It’s available in a range of colours and can be purchased via Amazon.
Treat a swashbuckling BBQ fan to a new implement – a cooking fork with a cutlass-style handle! It even comes complete with a cut out mask so the BBQ buccaneer can keep their identity a secret! Available from Firebox and other stockists.
Creature comforts
The cupcake craze doesn’t need to exclude the garden – The Worm That Turned is selling delicate seed cupcakes, perfect for your friends’ feathered friends!
Traditional bird feeders don’t always suit modern, urban gardens, so CJ Wildlife have introduced a range of stylish hanging and wall mounted bird feeders in stainless steel, suiting the most contemporary gardener.
