Buyer's guide - Garden tools

Overview......

By Alexandra Aussenac You guide to gardening

How does your garden grow?
Garden care
A garden in great shape
Focus on … lightweight tools
Make it easy on yourself!
Conclusion

How does your garden grow?

Whether you've got a big back garden or a few flower boxes on your balcony, it's time to get your gardening gloves out. Even if you don't necessarily have green fingers, we've got a whole range of tools to help you turn your garden into a blooming paradise!
With the help of everything from hedge trimmers and branch cutters to leaf blowers and rain barrels, a garden is easy to maintain. And high-pressure washers will keep your balcony looking spick and span.
Power tools, automatic sprinklers and other devices provide fast results without compromising on safety or costing you a fortune, so you can have fun tending your garden. Let Pixmania show you the way to greener pastures with this buyer’s guide!

Garden care

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From trimming to tidying, you need to tend your garden regularly to keep it looking at its best. You’ll need some tools to help you!

Trimmed to perfection

Timing is everything. For a healthy garden, you’ll need to trim your plants at the right moment and with the right tools. This helps the plants grow strong and also gives you the chance to shape them too.
Winter lasts from December to March. During these months, your garden still requires maintenance and plants should be protected and trimmed. Impress your neighbours Edward Scissorhands-style by giving your hedges a beautiful sculpted look with the help of shears and hedge trimmers. Hedge trimmers handle overall cutting and shaping, while shears and secateurs give the finishing touches.
If your hedge isn’t much higher than you and its branches are less than a centimetre thick, a 300 to 400-watt electric hedge trimmer should suffice. Wireless, battery-operated trimmers give maximum manoeuvrability and are generally reasonably priced You can even find trimmers with an extendible pole and even a 135° pivoting head, making it easier to trim hard-to-reach areas and saving your arm from getting too tired.
If you have a hedge with thicker branches, a 500-watt electric hedge trimmer with a long blade is what you need. For thick, extensive hedges, a model with a motor that runs on petrol is preferable, so that the power cord doesn’t get in your way. As these do get quite loud, you’ll want some ear protectors too.
A hedge trimmer with a 600mm blade can easily cut several branches at once while retaining all the manoeuvrability you need to get the job done. These models are powerful and don’t usually weigh more than 3kg. Hedge trimmers have two blades, basically flat metal plates, which use a reciprocating, or rapid back and forth motion to cut. On dual-action hedge trimmers, both top and bottom blades reciprocate, making cutting more efficient than single-action models (where one blade is stationary while the other reciprocates). Since both blades move at the same time, dual-action hedge trimmers vibrate less than their single-action counterparts.
Most people can prune a potted plant or cut back a small bush, but hedge and tree trimming can require a little bit of know-how. You’ll need to know how the plant will grow back and what its original shape looks like in order to trim to perfection!
Ratchet secateurs are perfect for narrow stems, stalks and twigs between 22 to 25mm thick. You’ll need anvil secateurs to snip through harder wood and dead branches. However, anvil secateurs tend to crush young or small branches, so bypass secateurs are the most efficient as they have a scissor blade action to make the cut. To reach high branches, consider getting a branch cutter with a 30 to 100cm handle or a pole pruner for thicker branches (over 40mm).
A manual or electric saw, or even a chainsaw, is perfect for trimming branches that are within your reach but too thick for your secateurs. Make sure you wear protective headgear, safety goggles and gloves when operating.
A chainsaw can cut anything from firewood to tree branches but should be used with caution. You can find electric chainsaws for occasional use like cutting firewood, but petrol powered models are more common and can be used frequently and for intensive tasks.
Compact chainsaws weighing about 3kg are better for pruning. Another option is the pole pruner, which can reach up to 5 metres. Don’t stand underneath the branches you’re cutting though, or you may be in for more than a bump on the head!
If you haven’t yet mastered the chainsaw, opt for a saw instead. A variety of models is available, including bow saws or handsaws, which can be used on both young branches and thick, dead ones.

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Neat and tidy

Once you’ve planted your garden and before your plants start bearing fruit – between April and July – keep your lawn looking at its best with a little help from a line-trimmer or a brush cutter. Use them to snip blades of grass around the edges of your garden that your lawnmower might have missed.
Brush cutters are better suited for cutting through undergrowth and bramble. Brush cutters, like line-trimmers, have a nylon line or string that spins around very quickly to snip plants. In addition to the nylon line, brush cutters also have sharp metal blades that cut through tougher plants more easily.
Line-trimmers are lighter and easier to handle, and therefore are more convenient for trimming grass and weeds growing by walls, trees or paths.
Choose your line-trimmer according to your lawn. If the grass has been recently planted and has fine blades and few weeds, a 300-watt device will do. If the grass on your lawn is denser or bushy, a 600 to 700-watt line-trimmer will do a better job. If you have a big garden, powerful petrol line-trimmers are also available.
Cordless line-trimmers give you more freedom because they don’t need to be plugged into a power source. A device with a pivoting head or with wheels makes it much easier to avoid obstacles and get under hedges, shrubs and lawn furniture.
Clear your lawn of leaves and debris with a vacuum blower. Get one that mulches too, and you can say goodbye to your rakes once and for all! They may make more noise than rakes, but they're more efficient too. These tools combine a blower to gather leaves and debris, a vacuum to suck them into a bag, and a mulcher to reduce the volume.
If you just want to gather leaves into a pile, then you only need a leaf blower. Choose one that’s light (preferably less than a kilo) and has a reduced charge time so you can use it whenever you like. Make your own fertilizer by putting leaves and debris into a compost pile – mulching helps the leaves decompose faster.
Vacuum blowers can be electric (for areas from 1,000 to 2,000 m²) or can run on petrol (for even larger gardens). For very large wooded areas, (greater than 5,000 square metres), petrol vacuum blowers on wheels are easier to move around.
Now that your lawn is neat and tidy, it’s time to tackle other areas, such as a balcony, terrace or patio. Pressure washers work wonders on walls, cars and garden furniture by shooting a high-pressure stream of water to get moss, grime and stubborn stains out.
A washer with 100 to 120 bars of pressure and a flow rate of 300 litres/hour is great for cleaning your car or bicycle, but to clean your patio or façade, you’ll need a more powerful washer that can pump out 130 bars at a flow rate of 450 litres/hour.
The pressure washer should have a motor of at least 180 watts so that you can use the device continuously for several hours. You can also use a detergent to get rid of particularly tough stains.

A garden in great shape

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Plants are living entities that need attention, maintenance and, most of all, water. Make sure you water your garden enough from the warmer summer months to the first frost, usually in November.

Watering wisely

To avoid wasting water and lugging around a watering can, automatic sprinklers are the way to go. Sprinklers are just as good at watering flower beds in gardens as potted plants on balconies. Automatic sprinkler systems have timers so your plants are tended to without any involvement on your part.
There are several ways you can water your garden, for example using a sprinkler system, trickle irrigation or drip irrigation.
Sprinklers are the most common automatic irrigation system – and a great way for kids to keep cool in the garden during those hot summer months! Sprinklers can be stationary, circular, rotary or oscillating, and you can also find impulse sprinklers. A stationary sprinkler can shoot a stream of water in a straight line up to 10 to 30 metres and can be positioned to water any part of your garden.
Circular sprinklers can water larger areas than stationary sprinklers (between 50 and 80 square metres) but consume the same amount of water: about 15 to 20 litres per minute. Circular sprinklers can also be turned into a rectangular sprinkler, provided the right jets are fitted onto the sprinkler. Some circular sprinklers can even be tailored to suit the shape of your garden, because distance and water pressure can be programmed for each jet.
To water bigger stretches of land without spending a fortune on water, go for rotary or oscillating sprinklers (for a rectangular-shaped garden). When placed in the middle of your garden, these sprinklers can water 60 to 270 square metres of land, depending on the make and model, and consume less water than stationary or circular sprinklers.
When watering your garden, you can be both economical and ecological thanks to a drip system. By running a drip system at the base of your plants, you can adjust the quantity of water you use to suit the type of plant you’re growing. Drip irrigation allows water to drip slowly into the roots of your flowers, shrubs and vegetable plants, giving them all the water they need. Since the water goes straight into the soil, evaporation and water runoff are kept to a minimum, and because water doesn’t touch the leaves, they don’t run the risk of “burning” in the sun.
Drip systems are great for large gardens as well as outdoor potted plants, and allow you to pretty much forget about watering. Couple your drip system with a programmer and it can run itself, providing water for your plants at any time of day. Drip systems provide adapted and regular irrigation of your plants. They are usually made of a large tube (of about 20mm in diameter), several micro-tubes, either porous or perforated, and watering spikes that can be adjusted to suit the needs of each plant in your garden. With a programmed drip system, you’re free to go on holiday any time of the year and be sure your plants will still be thriving when you get back!
Make your home and garden even more environmentally friendly with a rain barrel. Rain water can be collected easily in a rain barrel placed at the end of your gutter’s downspout. With a roof of 100 square metres, you can retrieve 5,000 litres of rain water! Rain barrels can filter and purify rain water, so it’s not only great for your plants, but it can also be used for washing your car or even doing laundry – just connect the collection vessel to your household plumbing system!
If you have a water tank, pond or well near your garden, don’t hesitate to use it to irrigate your garden – with the help of a pump, extracting the water is very simple. Garden pumps are practical, quiet and are available in different types, so you’re sure to find one that suits your needs: electric or submersible pumps depending on the depth of your well; pumps with petrol motors that can be used anywhere; and even solar-powered pumps.

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Handy tools and accessories

Garden tools help you shape and embellish your garden; make them even more versatile thanks to a few accessories.
Remember to get an extra battery or charger for your wireless power tools so they don't give up on you in the middle of your gardening.
To work efficiently, your tools require more than just an extra power boost. A blade or chain that’s worn out makes gardening harder on you since you’re the one who’ll have to compensate for your machine’s reduced performance. To spare yourself any unnecessary effort, keep an extra spool of nylon wire and some extra blades for your line-trimmer and hedge cutter. An extra chain and a replacement guide bar for your chainsaw can come in handy too.
Having the right tools for the job is important, but taking care of them is just as important if you want to keep them working properly. Sprays are available to keep your tools nicely oiled and reduce wear and tear, rusting and clogging due to dust. For hand-powered tools like secateurs or saws, you should sharpen the blades regularly and clean them off with rubbing alcohol to prevent bacteria from spreading from plant to plant.
Some companies even make extendible handles that can be attached to your tools, so you can prune and trim all those hard-to-reach places without putting yourself out.
Once you’ve finished your gardening, don’t forget to clean up. Pressure washers come with a whole range of accessories to help you tackle any task. There are nozzles and wands that adapt the water flow to the surface you’re cleaning, as well as brushes and special detergents for every situation, whether you’re washing your car, your façade or your shutters.
Accessories can make it easier to water your garden and keep it in tip-top shape. Different types of hose tails, connectors, flow regulators and distributors are available to help you create a water circuit to suit your garden. Whether you’re building a top-notch irrigation system or just hooking a spray nozzle up to your garden hose, you’ll be able to find an attachment to make your life easier.
If you think you might be missing a piece or if you’re having trouble deciding what to pick, a watering kit can help you set up your sprinkler system. You can also find kits for hosepipes, including coil hoses. They usually come with an attachment to connect to the tap, hosepipe connectors, a spray nozzle and sometimes a water lance or water jet.
A hose on a reel is much easier to pull around the garden, and once you’re finished watering, you won’t have to fight with a wet and dirty hosepipe to put it away – just roll the hose back onto its reel. Reels are often height-adjustable, and have anti-twist systems and even stands for water wands. Whether they're wall-mounted, come with wheels, or have automatic rewind, garden hose reels really help to take the chore out of gardening!
Spring for a good-quality sprayer (or spray nozzle or water wand) with a handle so you can access every spot that needs watering, such as hanging plants. These tools are easy to hook up and use, and should have several settings so that you can adjust the water pressure to suit your plants. “Watering can” models have the widest range of settings, all at your fingertips – just make sure you don’t get too heavy a wand or sprayer, or else your arm may get tired before you've finished.
Timers take the chore out of watering your garden, since they remember to do it for you. A programmer or timer really simplifies your automatic watering system: just choose how often and how long your garden needs to be watered on the programmer’s screen, and the system will take care of the rest with no further intervention on your part. Some sprinkler systems are solar-powered, and some even save water by measuring the moisture contained in the soil so your plants always receive just the right amount of water!

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Bestsellers

BLACK & DECKER GLC2500L Trimmer: £ 111.32 Inc. VAT; Temporarily out of stock

BOSCH ALS 25 2500 W Leaf Blower/Vacuum with mulching mode: £ 68 Inc. VAT; IN STOCK

MC CULLOCH MSB121E 1-stage Snow Blower: £ 426.99 Inc. VAT; IN STOCK

BLACK & DECKER GW3010V Vacuum, Blower & Shredder: £ 99.99 Inc. VAT; IN STOCK

BOSCH 1200 W Rotak 32 Electric Lawnmower (2011 model): £ 64.99 Inc. VAT; IN STOCK

BOSCH AHS 6000 Pro-T 700W Hedge Trimmer + Art 23 Easytrim 280 W Grass Trimmer: £ 114.90 Inc. VAT; IN STOCK

Focus on...

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lightweight tools

Make sure gardening doesn't become a chore by opting for lightweight tools that make the job easier!
A hedge trimmer or line cutter with a lithium-ion battery (like those found in mobile phones) can be used over greater distances and for longer. You won’t have to deal with sore muscles or pesky power cords with these featherweights; some barely weigh a pound!
You can also find lawnmowers that run on a Li-ion battery, which last long enough to mow between 300 and 600 square metres of lawn!

Make it easy on yourself!

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Besides being powerful and user-friendly, your tools should be safe and adapted to your body type.

Have fun tending your garden

Just like every other type of physical activity, proper posture and proper equipment are essential to keep you from wearing yourself out.
Make sure you hold and handle tools correctly; for example, always keep your wrist straight to use all your strength and avoid strain. Most tools have a moulded anti-slip grips or even vibration-reduction handles. You can even get a wrist saver to reduce stress to joints and avoid weeder’s wrist.
Hand-held and motorised garden tools are becoming lighter and easier to handle. Thanks to rack and lever mechanisms, they help to increase your arm power to make the job easier.
Gardening doesn't need to be a chore; positioning your hands and body properly will save you from aches and pains.
Good tools should be light enough to pick up without difficulty and be easy to hold; the longer the handle – especially a telescopic one—the better. A longer handle will allow you to reach higher-up branches without having to climb on something. You should also have a low stool or a knee rest lower-level gardening tasks.
Remember to keep your back straight, whether you’re digging up weeds or planting seeds, and bend down from your knees instead of your back! Wheelbarrows are a great help when you have several heavy bags and tools to move around.

Safety first!

Before you start looking at the safety features on your tools, you should make sure you're properly suited and booted! Of course, gloves and protective goggles are a must, but if you’re planning on doing some heavy-duty gardening (or landscaping), a jumpsuit, noise-resistant ear protectors and special shoes may also be a good idea. If a tree branch falls your way, you’ll be safer and can avoid any injury due to projected bits of wood or splinters.
Garden gloves come in useful for all kinds of tasks, such as pruning rose bushes and winter gardening. They ensure your hands are safe, comfortable and splinter-free while you work. And with no blisters, you can stay in your garden for longer!
Tools are constantly being designed and redesigned to keep you safe from harm. Hand-held tools, like secateurs or saws, have special handles that won't slip from your grip, and they even have well thought-out storage solutions; a case or a strap can keep them from accidentally opening up and potentially causing a nasty accident.
Most hedge trimmers are supplied with a protective shield to protect you from projectiles and to enable you to see exactly what you're cutting. Two, and sometimes three, separate connectors have to be on at the same time in order for the machine to run and for increased security. Tools that hook up to the mains often have systems that keep the power cord from being pulled out of the outlet, as well as a power indicator light so you don’t have to turn the machine on to see if it’s hooked up to the power. Check the time it takes for the machine to come to a complete stop to avoid any nasty surprises and make sure more dangerous tools, like chainsaws, have a safety brake.

Conclusion

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Tending your garden should be a source of pleasure, thanks in part to adapted tools and accessories.
You can choose from a wide array of secateurs, hedge trimmers, lawnmowers and saws to help you tackle any task, from trimming young branches to cutting thick brambles. Sprinkler systems and water cleaners are also a big help if you want to keep your garden healthy.
Make sure all the hoses and tubes are properly fitted to avoid wasting water.