Gifts for the gardeners on your list

By LADYBUG

I find gardeners the easiest to pick up gifts for – mainly because I just go by what I’d really, really like myself!

The list tends to be divided into two broad categories: Plants and hardware. Under the first I plunk everything from seeds and cuttings, potpourri made from lavender and rose petals, etc.

For the second, I am guided by gifts I have received from those who know I love gardening.

My friend Jeeth once shipped a dangerous-looking knife to me. Made in Japan, the Hori Hori knife made by Nisaku is a work of art. A strong, shining steel blade with straight and serrated edges, a beautiful wooden handle that feels so good in my hand. The whole, a tool that makes short work of dividing and lifting plants each spring and fall. I used to dig around clumps of plants I wanted to divide, and then heave (and huff and puff) trying to lift it out. It took a whole lot of effort and I was sometimes left with a mangled root ball. Now I just cut through a portion of the plant base and lift the portion out. Almost like slicing a cake, I think, thanking Jeeth in my heart.

My sister-in-law Reena gifted me a pack of Gardena gardening gloves. The. Best. Gloves. Ever. I had started with those cloth gloves which look pretty when you start out but are reduced to muddy, limp things in no time. I used to pull them off anyway when I needed to do any actual gardening because they were loose, didn’t fit well and I couldn’t feel the plants through them. And so I wore my scratched, mud-under-the-nails hands with pride. “These are a serious gardener’s paws!” I’d say. Until I began using the gloves Reena got for me.

Impenetrable enough to keep me safe while trimming thorny rose bushes and tactile enough so I can feel the smallest weeds. And long-lasting. Make that super long-lasting. She gave me a set of nine pairs a few years ago and I still have five unopened pairs in the pack.

As I walk by an old spade that hangs on the wall of my garden shed, I see my friend and garden guru Dorothy leaning on it, taking a small breather in her beloved garden.

I recall the time she saw me, a novice gardener, struggling to make a bed in our back yard. The shining new spade we’d just purchased was no match for the hard clay soil.

“Here, let me do this,” she said, and she did. Dug in as though she was cutting through butter.

Considering she had at least three, maybe four decades on me, I was astonished. And embarrassed.

“It’s not you, I have my magic helper!” she said, brandishing an old spade. The metal on it looked like it had been chewed at by rats – if rats could chew through iron.

It knew the soil, said Dorothy, and offered to lend it to me whenever I needed to dig something that was beyond my new spade’s skill set. Making a new garden, I borrowed it so often that she insisted I keep it in our shed.

“I know where to find it if I need it,” she assured me with a sweet smile.

I inherited that spade from her when she stopped doing much active gardening and brought it with me when we moved a few years ago. In my new garden, too, it helped me make beds for the peonies and iris Dorothy had given me and for other plants from other friends.

I was heartbroken when the old wood on the handle snapped one day.

“You can still keep it, mom,” said my son, gluing the two pieces back together. Its digging days are done, but there it hangs, reminding me of countless sunny afternoons spent soaking up gardening wisdom from Dorothy.

As I write this, I think of a third category – dollar store finds! I am thrilled to find twine in a tin container with the words, A garden is a friend you can visit any time painted on it. And coffee mugs for Master gardeners! I can think of several gardeners on my list who would be very pleased to receive both!