A practical gift guide for gardeners

Gardening is another hobby that can be a great inspiration for presents. But, and speaking from experience, while it's always nice to have a pretty garden trowel set there is a limit to how many you can have, and often something more practical might also be appreciated.  For this week's gift guide I've put together a mix of items that I use, and which I have my eye on.

While the secateurs I told you about in the summer are brilliant, when there's more heavy duty work to be done I turn to my ratchet secateurs which we bought one year at Grand Designs - they were so good that when we went to another home show later in the year, we bought another pair. Now when we're working in the garden we know there's two pairs available and after having my pair nicked by MOH once too often, mine can usually be found in my back pocket when not in use.

It was earlier this year that I shared my admiration for the Stihl trimmer, and I'd recommend the Stihl range generally. You'll remember I went to visit their factory in Kufstein in January, and not only was it fantastic, the research that goes into these products blew me away. Coupled with the fact that the people were so lovely too, for me, if there's a choice I'd always opt for the Stihl or Viking products, because I've seen how they're assembled and looked their top management in the eye (in a non-confrontational way!).

While I was in Portugal this October they launched a new range of powerful and lightweight tools, and if I'm honest I've got my eyes on the leaf blower from this range - looking at the details it weighs 2kg, including the integrated battery.  Their site says it's quiet and I can well believe this, remember I've been into their Competence Centre, which is Europe's largest anechoic chamber, and totally mind blowing (pun not intended). 

At the time I told you how the echo from all sound, including sound you don't hear, is removed - but anyway, the testing that goes into noise levels means I believe it when they say it's quiet.  Our current leaf blower (and sucker) is far from quiet, in fact it sounds more like a motorbike and therefore isn't used very much at all.  And we wouldn't buy a leaf sucker bit again, as it gets even noisier (which we never thought possible) if it sucks up a stone - worth remembering if you're in the market for a leaf blower.

A practical gardener's gift guide by lifeat139a on Polyvore

The henchman ladder is also on my wish list. I'm a bit wobbly up ladders, but I'm also impatient so often can't wait for MOH to finish doing whatever he's doing to come and hold the ladder - which I instantly regret of course, every single time!  This one has a wider base, which will make it more stable and it also has adjustable feet, because no garden ever is ever flat is it?  

My current ladder has a lean guard - that's my non-technical name, but hopefully descriptive enough for you to know what I mean, and having somewhere to rest tools, gloves and string is always a good move too.

The gloves and cloche, well I go through gardening gloves like anything - I'm not quite sure what I do to them - but I do like to have pink gloves, I leave the more usual green ones for MOH. Cloches are also on my wishlist, and this Victorian style cloche would be a great addition to any garden wouldn't it? 

And I wouldn't even mind seeing it, much nicer than anything I've Heath-Robinson-ed together!

Would you sell your kitchen?

Or indeed, would you buy a second-hand or ex-display kitchen?  We sold our kitchen back in 2013 on eBay, and well, it felt odd. I mean, how do you put a price on something that's been in place for years, has had plenty of use and usually you'd expect to throw into a skip?

We didn't realise selling kitchens was even a thing, for all of the reasons I've just given.  But when our kitchen planner suggested it the idea appealed, not only to offset some some of the cost of our new kitchen, but also because there wasn't too much wrong with most of the units., and so if someone else could make use of them, then that was a good result for us.

If the units weren't that bad you might be wondering why we were replacing our kitchen at all.  A couple were starting to show wear and tear, and the inbuilt dishwasher needed replacing and we knew that as the years went on it'd only get worse.  We didn't want to be in the position of having to put in a new kitchen when the time came to move, that felt a waste, and well, we'd rather enjoy the new kitchen ourselves. 

That said we didn't have a clue about how to price this. As you can see there were a few units, as well as two tall larder cupboards that aren't shown. We quickly learnt that we'd priced it too low, when it was snapped up almost immediately on eBay. But it was a price we were happy with and we had time constraints on when it could be collected. Our kitchen fitters removed the old kitchen and our buyer collected it the same day. 

Looking back at these photos I'm struck by a couple of things. Firstly how tidy our kitchen was, but I think this is an illusion and we'd cleared the worktops to make it look super smart in the pictures, like you do and secondly how dated it looks compared to our new kitchen. We loved this kitchen though. I loved how it didn't match, and that's something we've replicated, but with lighter colours. 

From this kitchen we also knew that we didn't want tiled splashbacks and you'll know instead of the laminate board used here we've gone for a glass splashback instead. And one of my absolute musts was to have the boiler enclosed. It used to be, but then the boiler was replaced for a new model and the existing cupboard didn't work, that left us with a sparkling white appliance amongst a row of bottle green base units, and really jarred with me, e-v-e-r-y-t-i-m-e I saw it. 

I do wonder what became of our kitchen though. I know the person who bought it was hoping to use as much of it as he could, but that it was going into a smaller space. It's unlikely that it would end up in the same horseshoe formation, but I imagine there's so many combinations that would have worked, that it would be like a life-sized jigsaw puzzle. 

I've recently become aware of a company that could not only help people sell their kitchens, but also help people buy used and ex-display kitchens, which if you want to get value for money sounds ideal.  The Used Kitchen Exchange are a family business who specialise in just that and was founded after they purchased a pre-owned kitchen themselves. So they have first-hand experience of buying a kitchen online and also managed to bag themselves a bargain at the same time, and the realisation that enabling people to source quality kitchens at a cheap price from a sustainable source was possible.

The Used Kitchen Exchange also offers a free kitchen valuation for kitchens that meet their criteria, and as part of their service they offer free professional photography, free advertising, the selling part (obviously) and ensuring kitchens are professionally removed, packed and delivered to their new owners.  There's more information about the full process on their website.

And they've saved thousands of tons of carcinogenic MDF from going to landfill. You can't say fairer than that, can you? 

Oh, and if you see ever see a kitchen with bottle green gloss base units and cherry wood wall units, let me know as it could be my old kitchen, and I'd love to see it settled into its new home!

* This is a collaborative post, but all views are my own.

Whoops, tulips!

Relatively recently I remembered I'd bought some tulips. And quite quickly after that I remembered I hadn't planted them yet, and I was kind of late doing that. But in that moment, the thing I couldn't remember is where they were. 

Hmmnn.

This in itself was more troubling than not remembering to have planted the bulbs in the first place. I was pretty sure they would be ok, maybe sprouting a bit, not too much if I was lucky. I hoped that they were the same as seeds, in that they're programmed to grow, so will try their best for you, well, as long as you eventually give them some help. Help like soil, and water, that kind of thing.

My brain is one of those brains that usually knows where things are, even down to the exact location. For example I'll send MOH to get something from the spare freezer, he'll be rummaging (as usual) and I'll helpfully suggest, top shelf on the right, or wherever it is he's looking for, to much amazement from him (and sometimes me too). 

So it's a bit disconcerting when my brain can't retrieve that kind of information. Usually it'll pop back in at some point, so I leave it a while before starting The Search. 

And sure enough, after a little while of mulling, a day or so later, it came to me. There were in the conservatory, with my seeds. And when I checked, so they were. Thankfully they weren't sprouted so much that they'd grown through the bag either. Phew. 

I resolved to plant them as soon as I could, but that was easier said than done with a weekend in Norfolk planned and then another busy weekend with a long to do list, and one where the tulips didn't make it to the top of the list. But finally this weekend I planted them, and it was lovely to be out in the garden again. 

There was some maths involved too, I had ten of each of the following tulips:

• Weisse Berliner: a white flower, with up to four flowers per stem
• Flaming Flag: a white flower with purple streaks, almost like a raspberry ripple ice cream (but different colours!)
• Menton: a pale coral pink tulip
• Queen of the Night: the infamous black tulip.

And I had either three or five pots to plant them in. Neither was easy for the maths. As I'd also found 55 alliums, I split the 40 tulips between three pots, and the alliums between the remaining two.

And I'm hoping they'll grow. I figured the fact that some of them are sprouting already is a good sign, they're obviously going to be late flowering, I won't be having tulips in April I'm sure. But I hope they'll manage something at some point this year, if not there's always next year.

Normally I'd plant some pansies or something that was already flowering to make the pots look a bit prettier, but not this time. It all feels very disorganised, most likely because it is, but I thought it waa about time these tulips were planted. They're a good four months later than they should be.

As I said before, whoops, tulips!