With the holidays just around the corner, many people are looking for the perfect gift to share with their loved ones. As the Paulding County Extension agent, I posed the question of “What is your favorite gardening gift?” to Paulding County Master Gardener Extension Volunteers. They came up with some fantastic suggestions for the gardener on your list.
Bob Banks wants books. “Reference books for gardeners are a great tool and they can enjoy them any time of year. I would like to have a book on trees of Georgia, because you can never know too much about these beautiful splendors of nature,” he said.
Consider giving a gardener a copy of Michael Dirr’s Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. This is viewed as the “woody plant bible” by professional landscapers and Master Gardeners alike. It contains information about the characteristics, growing requirements and uses for many plants.
For a guide to native trees, maybe your gardener would like Trees of Georgia and Adjacent States by Claud Brown and Kay Kirkman. This book contains a key to trees, descriptions and a section with color photos to help with tree identification. There are also great books about perennial and annual plants available, too. Think about your gardener’s interests and look for a reference book that will help them expand their knowledge on that topic.
Lifetime Master Gardener Mickey Gazaway wants a gift that will make gardening easier on her body. “My favorite gardening tool is a kneeling bench. I'm on my second one. The older I get, the more I appreciate it. It cushions my knees when I am planting or weeding and it makes getting up a lot easier,” she said. No gardener wants to give up their favorite past time, so tools that make it possible to garden through changes in mobility are a great idea.
Another tool recommended for helping with changing mobility was a “fruit picker.” Master Gardener Tommy Gordon suggested this, but says he isn’t sure it actually exists. So maybe with his idea, you could build this for your fruit tree gardener. “It should be on a pole about 15 feet long. At the top end of the pole, have a ridged V-shaped part that could be put just above the fruit to pull the fruit free. A basket would be attached a few inches below the V-shaped part in which to catch the fruit,” he said.
The right equipment really helps a gardener with their chores. Marsha Rauscher wants boots. “Garden boots! I feel protected from snakes, poison ivy and sticker bushes. I will venture into rougher areas with them on and trim those overgrown areas,” she said.
Carl Swanson wants gloves. “Gardener’s always need gloves. I always keep an extra pair of thin Nitrile gloves and love them for their thinness and flexibility,” he said. Betty Cogrove says the right hand tools make many chores much easier. “The tool I love the most is my hand weeder. I use it to get up the roots of weeds in my garden and flowerbeds,” she said. “I also like my hand garden scissors. I trim flowers, shrubs and small branches. I like to cut off flower seedpods or cut some flowers to bring in the house. They are also good for dead-heading.”
Master Gardener Robbie Cheatham includes an electric leaf blower vacuum on his must have wish list. “Raking and bagging leaves is an unpleasant annual chore. The raking is isn't terribly taxing but the repetitious bending and placing leaves into a bag wears thin quickly,” he said. “The leaf blower helps to corral the leaves into a pile. The vacuum feature sucks them up, shreds them and makes an excellent mulch or fill for a compost bin. It saves time, energy and most importantly my back.”
Other Master Gardener Extension Volunteers want accessories to help with container gardening. Linda Godsey recommended plant stands. “I prefer to have plant stands for both my porch and in my house,” she said. “Additionally, I love my pocket hose so I don't have to worry about storage space for my porch garden.” The plant stands add height and additional space to the porch garden and make it easy to reach without bending. The pocket hose is lightweight and does not take up much space in already limited garden area.
Of course, you can always please a gardener by adding another plant to their collection. Consider a Christmas cactus or a poinsettia, or even a rosemary trimmed like a mini-Christmas tree.
For more on the University of Georgia Master Gardener program, see the website www.caes.uga.edu/departments/hort/extension/mastergardener/.
