Stihl cordless hedgetrimmers: HSA 86 & HLA 85

It’s more than two years since I first looked at Stihl’s cordless hedge trimmers for the blog, and in that time the range has grown and consolidated its position at the head of a crowded field of battery powered garden equipment. More to the point, these machines have become part of my everyday toolkit, none more useful to me than the two reviewed here.

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Stihl RMA 443 TC cordless lawn mower

Lawn mowing season is well and truly here and this year, for reasons we’re all too familiar with, most of us are spending a lot more time in the company of the green stuff than would normally be the case. Having a reliable, quiet, and efficient mower is one of those things that makes the less glamorous aspects of being a garden owner less of a chore, and Stihl’s range of cordless electric machines delivers on all counts. I’ve been putting the RMA 443 TC through its paces.

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Three wonderful weeders from Burgon & Ball

If you’ve still a little Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket, then let me help you spend a very few pennies on some shiny new gardening tools. You can tell yourself it’s a noble deed in the cause of tidying the garden, and if Marie Kondo comes round to complain about more stuff, we can lock her in the shed.

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A gardener’s tools: Grandma’s butter knife

Robbie Blackhall-Miles of Fossil Plants wonders what his grandma would make of what he’s been getting up to with her butter knife. This is the third post in the series on A gardener’s tools.

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Henchman tripod ladders

I have a new best friend in the garden. He’s eight foot tall, has three legs and seems perfectly happy for me to stand on him for extended periods. I am of course referring to a tripod ladder, but not just any tripod ladder. This is the tripod ladder I’ve had my beady eye on ever since I began gardening as career, and it’s made by the UK company Henchman.

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A gardener’s tools: the table fork

For this, the second post in the series on A gardener’s tools, we’re introduced to a fork with a difference. Carly Green of the National Botanic Garden of Wales gives us a peek into her tool roll.

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Stihl cordless hedgetrimmers

Behind every glorious garden, whether the overriding style be neatly formal or wondrously wafty, there’s a machine-wielding gardener keeping the underlying structure in trim. It’s as necessary in a small domestic garden as a large public one, and in this post I’ll be putting machines aimed at both ends of the spectrum through their paces.

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A gardener’s tools: the dissecting kit

I’m delighted to welcome Kew’s Miranda Janatka for the first post in a series on A gardener’s tools, in which different gardeners will be writing about the tools which they find invaluable in their labours, as they tend gardens and nurture plants. Having seen a photography of Miranda’s dissecting kit on her Instagram feed, I had to ask her if she’d be happy to go into the background behind the collection and, fortunately for us, she said yes.

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EGO Power+ HT5100E battery powered hedge trimmer

My hedgecutter of choice is petrol powered – efficient and reliable, but also a cumbersome gas guzzler. Over the last few weeks, instead of this tried and trusted machine, I threw myself in at the deep end and took a battery powered alternative. Read on to discover how I got on.

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Resolution 2017

I’m not big on new year’s resolutions. To my mind, every day brings with it an opportunity to do better – why wait till January to make them, and then spend the remainder of the year berating yourself for breaking them? With something seasonal, like gardening, however, it makes sense. But I’m still limiting myself to one.

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Garden tools from Burgon & Ball

The awfully nice people at Burgon & Ball have sent me some of their marvellous garden tools in exchange for a review here on the blog. Read on for my first impressions of these shiny wonders.

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Burgon & Ball Sophie Conran Precision Secateurs

It’s a matter of record how much I love my secateurs. The only slight drawback to them is that the blades often prove a little on the large side for selectively pruning in tight spaces. Having considered a few different models, these precision secateurs from Burgon & Ball’s Sophie Conran range caught my eye, and I’ve been putting them through their paces over the past fortnight.

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