Tools every gardener needs
Now that you have got your basic kit - spade, fork, secateurs and pruning saw, you need to buy the rake, bucket and string. These are useful around the garden for tidying up, moving things from place to place and making sure plants grow the way you want them to. When choosing the other tools, your top priorities should be comfort and quality. But in this last category, you can have a bit of fun. Brighten up your garden by choosing buckets in pink, red, purple, yellow or the customary green. It's best to always have two buckets with you - one for holding the hand tools, your gloves, flask of coffee and the string and the other for putting all the weeds and garden rubbish in.
String is a good all-purpose supply for tying in the roses along walls, staking delphiniums, and encouraging training honeysuckles or any climbers. You can also use it to make a string line when cutting a lawn edge to give the perfect straight line.
As far as buying the rake is concerned - follow the same principles as the border spade and fork - get the right height tool that's comfortable for you - just remember all those leaves that you have to rake up in autumn. Rakes are good for not only raking leaves but tidying up where you may have been splitting your plants, raking gravel driveways, moving sand back into sand pits and so on. The rake is the equivalent to the housekeeper's broom. I like to make raking part of my exercise programme, while also getting some fresh air. I defy you to find any Davina workout that gives you a better defined waistline than an hours' worth of raking once a week throughout autumn.
Rachel Wood is a professional gardener based in Gloucestershire
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