The Complete Guide to Landscape Design, Renovation, and Maintenance
by Cass Turnbull

TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Personnel at the Parks Department where I worked used to drive the warehouse people crazy by ordering the same tool by several different names. We were going to assign every tool a permanent Latin name, but it was voted down. I had one worker whose vocabulary was minimalist to the point that he called a "pitch fork" a "pick." Anyway, we had many such wonderfully named tools as square-point shovels, madaxes, baby rakes, and rock forks.

I will cover here only the tools I think you'll need as a homeowner, and save the more technical stuff for my second book--So, You Want to be a Gardener!

If I were shipwrecked on a desert island, I would most want to have my Felco #2 hand pruners and quick-draw holster, which attaches to my belt, where the pruners stay. (I've been accused of sleeping with it on) and my spring/fan rake. Next, I would want a blue plastic tarp, a plastic bucket, loppers, folding pruning saw, and hand cultivator (the claw, or scratch tool). The loppers need to have rubber lopper bumpers to cushion the impact the cutting has on my hands. Next, I would want a dandelion weeder, a garden fork, a garden hoe, a scuffle hoe (for weeds in cracks and tiny baby weeds in beds), a half moon-edger, a round-point and a medium sized square-point shovel, a wide tine pitch fork (pick), a mattock (not pick), a three-point eight-foot orchard ladder for uneven ground, a two-yard wheel barrow, and then a pair of hedge shears. My round-point shovel would have a straight shank, good for digging, not a curved shank, good for scooping.

See the tools of choice here.

After that I want a stiff (sawed or cut off) house broom, a not-too-stiff/not-too-fine street broom, a bow/hard rake, a small chainsaw, a blower, and power hedge shears, a 3/4-ton pickup truck, and then I want a "swamper." A swamper is the person who sits next to the driver and gets out to open the gate. They are also known as "gofers" and "grunts." I don't want a mower or a weedeater, since there is no grass on my island.

All my tools will be painted bright fluorescent red instead of tasteful garden brown, so that I won't lose them in the pile of weeds and leaves. I also want a lifetime supply of leather gloves made for smaller hands, medium size, please.

SUMMARY
1. Don't buy cheap tools. Good ones are worth the money.

Forward to Looking for Dead Wood

Back to The Science of Pruning