I am seriously Christmas-Phobic, preferring to celebrate the Winter Solstice Festival of Yule. But I’ve put my Bah Humbug-ness aside to bring you some of my favourite gift ideas for your glamorous gardening loved ones this holiday season.
Happy Holidays!
Text and Photography: Scarlett Cannon
All serious gardeners need serious gardening gloves. Replacing my usual gloves every 8-12 months, I recently invested in a pair of ultra-gorgeous Dry Touch gloves from Gold Leaf. Made from the same high quality leather used in fashion gloves, they look fabulous, feel amazing and stay soft even when caked in mud! Tough, Soft and Winter Touch gloves are also available in the range. Around £20 and easily found at good stockists and online.
Top tools make top gifts in my opinion. Implementations make a range of tip-top copper tools, including this amazing copper trowel. Copper tools do not rust and last for years and years. They deter slugs and snails and are kinder to the land. They also look great and handle well. Expensive but worth it, this is a truly fabulous gift for a gardener that you love. £31 from Implementations.
A grow bag might seem like a rather strange gift but See it Gro make cool and funky mini growbags filled with a variety of peat-free composts that arrive in coir block form. You open up the bag and add water. Around 15 minutes later the water will have expanded the coir block into gorgeous ready-to-use compost. Make some drainage holes, pop it on a window ledge and grow something nice to eat. The compact size and breezy packaging looks good indoors as well as out, and the range includes mixes for herbs, strawberries, peppers, tomatoes, chillies and multipurpose. Perfect for the beginner grower. £3.99 from notonthehighstreet.com
Flock Follies make contemporary birdfeeders designed especially for small garden birds. Proudly made in the UK, they come in a range of bright colours and, hip-hip-hurray, they are squirrel-resistant. Nature lovers will delight in one of these delightful feeders. Prices start at £20.
A novel but nonetheless practical gift for children young and old can be found in Apples and Pears’ Gifts in a Tin range. Make your own insect house or build your own bird feeder; everything you need is included in the tin. There are also tins for seed sowing, flower pressing and a gardener’s discovery kit for young minds, complete with magnifying glass and notebook. £9.99 from Derby House.
If conservation is important to your loved ones then Plant Heritage Membership makes a splendid gift. Plant Heritage is a very important organisation involved in worldwide conservation. They manage the National Plant Collection; “living plant libraries” of which there are over 630 collections in Britain. Their slogan, Conservation Through Cultivation, says it all. There are many benefits to joining Plant Heritage including access to rare and unusual plants. You might even consider becoming a National Plant Collection Holder, helping conserve the rich diversity of plants for the benefit of everyone through horticulture, education and science. Cool! There are a range of yearly memberships to Plant Heritage starting from £15.
When I was a child I loved helping out on the allotment but the adult tools were always too large and difficult to handle. If only I’d had a Spear and Jackson Children’s Trowel and Weedfork Set to use!! One of my favourite brands, Joseph Bentley make a scaled-down range of their high quality gardening tools for children. Good quality kids tools can be found at good stockists and online, and with prices starting at around £8 for a trowel and fork set, your little growers have never had it so good!