There must be items, plants or accessories you can’t live without in your gardening world! I know I have several objects that to me, are crucial to giving me the satisfaction I get every year from my garden. So, I hear you ask, what are my five irreplaceable garden accessories that help me keep Driftwood By Sea look its very best throughout the summer openings. Here are my top picks.
Soil moisture meter
I came across one of these gadgets many years go and thought it might be useful. Fast forward several years and I realise how much of an understatement that was. I highly recommend this garden accessory which I also find incredibly useful in the house too, to monitor house plant watering.
A moisture sensor can provide accurate information about the soil moisture of the plant. Probe the end into your container or soil and check out the colour area on the display to see if your soil is dry, moist or wet. It’s as simple as that. It’s a great way to grasp the growth status of the plant and then give it the best care.
These testers don’t require batteries or power either, so you can use it both indoors and outdoors at any time. More importantly, they are small and very light, and a perfect watering aid. In a garden that has a large number of containers, trust me, this is truly an invaluable gadget.
Garden trug
In a garden like mine, that needs to be kept at its prime through the summer months for garden visitors, I always wander around each morning to keep it tidy. Another invaluable addition to my gardening kit is a simple plastic trug. I have a couple I use daily, both with a 15-litre capacity. This nifty garden trug is easy to keep clean, with handy grab handles. It is the perfect accompaniment as you wander around the garden picking out any weeds, dead heading or transporting compost or soil. An essential piece of kit for any gardener in my humble opinion.
Kneeling pad
For someone like me, over 70 with dodgy knees, a daily companion around the plot is my kneeling pad. As I have got older, this has become more and more important. Gardeners spend a lot of time on their knees, so one of these has become invaluable at Driftwood. I find them particularly useful when I have to get down and clear debris from my gravel beds. Not only are they helping on the knees per se, it is much more comfortable than kneeling direct on uneven pebbles. In the last couple of years, I have opted to use two of them at once making the task even more comfortable.
Plant food
To keep my plot looking its floriferous best at all times, there is most definitely a need to feed the plants. I’ve tried several products over the years, some of which have been very good, others not so good. Whatever you choose to use this has to be among the top five of any gardener’s armoury. OK, maybe I’m biased, but there is no question in my book that Richard Jackson’s Flower Power is a cut above the rest. Having used the product now for nearly 8 years, I can honestly say my garden most definitely looks better for it. It is also incredibly pleasing to have return garden visitors say to me that they had followed my advice last year and bought some Flower Power and they too had been impressed with the results. You can’t get a better recommendation than that!
My iPhone camera
Over the years I must have taken many hundreds of thousands of images of my garden. I am prolific, posting images of the garden on social media, across many mainstream channels, like Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Threads and X (formerly Twitter) but also on several gardening apps such as Garden Tags. In order to maintain that presence and help promote the garden to potential visitors, good images are crucial. Not only that, images are needed for my published writing too, like these features along with a weekly full-page feature in a Brighton newspaper that requires 5 fresh images every week to be published and a selection of 5 or 6 each month for a national gardening magazine for starters. I used to have both a camera and a phone but now, since I’ve had a iPhone, the task is even easier with the gadget kept in my back pocket, to be pulled out as and when to capture the image.
I’m sure I could go on with a never-ending list of trusted garden props but for now this will have to do. I’m sure all of you reading this will have your own favourite five, I’d love to know what they are. Happy gardening.
