Hand Tools

At the heart of Fosseway Garden Centre is our hand tools – a selection of top brands such as Spear and Jackson, Gardman, Moulton Mill, Burgon and Ball, Wolf and Felco. If you have the right tools you will have fewer aches and pains and jobs will take much less time to finish.

Select from elegantly traditional, seriously workmanlike or colourful and funky, all made from the best materials.
Spades and Forks

A spade and fork are the basic, essential tools for any gardener, and depending on your height you need to choose them with the right shaft length to prevent aching muscles and unnecessary tiredness.

Then there are different widths of blade or tines to consider, depending on the type of digging you're likely to be doing - narrow borders or a big area – and your physical strength. There are also options for those who have difficulty bending and lifting, such as a special ergonomic handle that makes digging more comfortable.

The materials that combine to make your spade and fork are also important; perhaps a weatherproofed hardwood shaft with either a D or T handle;  a solid forged carbon steel head and socket, highly polished or with a PTFE coating to stop soil sticking to the blade or tines. Check that the handles are big enough for you to grip comfortably, especially when you're wearing gloves.

A half-moon lawn edger slices like a spade and gives a professional edge to the lawn.
A small hand fork is ideal for weeding around plants and in pots, and if you tend to lose small tools under plants choose ones with brightly coloured handles. If bending is a problem, we stock long handled versions.

Standard sized trowels with a wide blade are useful for many jobs such as planting up pots, but there are special trowels for other jobs, such as transplanting young plants.

Bulb planters remove a plug of soil that can be replaced after the bulb has been dropped into the hole. Dibbers simply make a hole for a seedling to be popped in.


Hoes and Rakes

Like the long handled fork, hoes are good for when you need to loosen compacted soil or weed amongst established plants, especially at the back of a bed.
The Dutch hoe is the familiar one with a D-shaped head on the end of a long shaft. The draw hoe has a blade set at right angles to the shaft and is good for drawing soil around the stems of plants, such as earthing up potatoes or creating a seed drill.
Garden and grass rakes can be essential to keep the garden tidy. We have a selection of rakes and garden tidying accessories.

Caring For Your Cutting Tools

Clean blades after use, dry thoroughly and oil lightly. Sharpen blades as soon as they begin to blunt and replace any that are damaged before storing your tools in a dry environment. Fosseway Garden Centre will sharpen your cutting tools for you, including chainsaw chains as well as lawnmowers – any make; ask us for a quotation.

Saws

There are two types of gardening saw, a pruning saw and a bow saw. The pruning saw has a handle and a tapering blade to get into overgrown areas of a tree without damaging other branches. The bow saw has a blade is held between the two ends of the bow shaped handle, and the is useful for cutting thick branches, small trees and cutting up felled branches for disposal.

Bill Hooks, Grass Hooks, Scythettes

Fully hardened and tempered high carbon steel blades with beech handles, these are ideal where you have patches of long grass or undergrowth to trim.

Pocket Knives

A folding knife is an essential tool for any gardener to carry in a pocket for the moment when twine needs cutting, a pruning opportunity is spotted or when cutting and grafting.
We stock perhaps the most beautiful: Burgon & Ball’s gardeners folding pocket knives are hand crafted, high carbon steel bladed, with rosewood handle and a brass blade housing, and make excellent gifts.

We also have specialist tools, some of them quite unusual, to deal with problems such as weeds in lawns and between paving stones…these also make great gifts for the gardener who has everything else.

Visit us for more Hand Tools info