The 20 Best Gifts for Gardeners

The Gardener’s Puddle Proof Tote will render your favorite gardener prepared, whether they’re facing a patch of weeds, a tray of starts, or a vigorous vine. It has a large main pocket and six narrow side pouches, for clippers, gloves, or twine. There are two mesh cinch pockets (big enough to hold a water bottle) on either end, and the whole thing is sturdy and waterproof without being bulky or heavy. It comes in a bright blue or subtle khaki. Your gardening pal will never lose their towel in the flower bed again.

Serious gardeners keep careful track of water, and knowing how much precipitation they’re getting helps to determine whether further watering is needed. The Stratus Rain Gauge is not the most decorative item, but it is accurate and scientific and great for weekend meteorologists. It’s manufactured to National Weather Service specifications, with a wide top to funnel rainwater into a tube that measures to 1/100 of an inch. Any precipitation over an inch (and up to 11 inches) is measured in the spillover container. This is the official rain gauge for CoCoRaHS, a volunteer network of backyard weather observers who submit their daily readings to help accurately measure and map precipitation at a hyper-local level.

For some of us, watering by hand is one of the great pleasures in life. For balcony gardeners, it can be a necessity. The sturdy, plastic Dramm Premium High Grade Long Spout Watering Can holds a generous, totable 2 gallons, and it comes in six cheery colors. This is our pick for the best outdoor watering can because it can be left outside all year without harm, it’s comfortable to hold, and its pour quality is excellent.

Putting away the hose is one of least pleasant, least rewarding garden chores. Our best retractable hose pick makes all of the muddy, irritating mess disappear with a slight tug. The Hoselink Retractable Hose Reel comes in 50- or 82-foot versions. A guide roller at the reel guarantees that the hose spools evenly when it retracts, instead of in a big lump. Because you can mount this reel at any height, it also eliminates potential back strain from bending over. Our only reservation is that the hose is just ½ inch in diameter—the standard is ⅝ inch—so big watering jobs may take longer.

A gardener’s hands will get dirty—very dirty. A good soap and a quality nail brush are must-haves for working the soil out of nail beds and fingerprints. Organic Gardener’s Soap smells like an herb garden, and it contains ground apricot kernels and coffee, for scrubbing particularly dirt-encrusted hands. If there’s anything left over, a lovely little nail brush can do the second shift. The polished olive-wood handle resists mold, and two sizes of stiff boar bristles—short for fingernails, long for fingertips and palms—leave hands soft and clean.

Gardening is hard on the knees. Anyone who’s spent even an hour on bended knee will appreciate the comfort of this half bench, half patella-saving kneeler. Turn the Deep Seat Garden Kneeler bench side down, and you have a padded protector with handles for balance and hoisting. Flip it over, and it’s a comfy seat for yard-work respites. The powder-coated steel frame is rust-resistant, so your favorite gardener needn’t worry if it’s exposed to the morning dew or an unexpected rainfall.

While Crocs Dylan Clogs aren’t specifically gardening shoes, we’ve had great success using them as such. Like all Crocs, they’re squishy and comfy, and you can spray them clean with a hose (heftier stains might require a little more effort). This close-toed version does a much better job of keeping water and dirt off of feet than their holier brethren, and the very small lip at the heel keeps them from slipping off. They’re not right for messy garden jobs (and they won’t protect toes against heavy objects), but for padding around with a hose and a pair of clippers, they’re perfect.

Lopping, pruning, and deadheading are three of the great joys of gardening, and good pruners are essential to get the job done. The Felco 2 Classic Manual Hand Pruner is our pick for the best garden pruners. These pruners are sharp and smooth. And with a little TLC (don’t put them away wet and dirty), they might just last forever. If something does go awry, Felco offers a lifetime warranty and replacement parts.

A rigid rectangle of foam isn’t exactly sexy, but it will save your gardening pal’s knees while they’re weeding, mulching, trimming, composting, and all of the other low-to-the-ground tasks a garden demands. Made from 1.5 inches of springy foam, the Gorilla Grip Thick Foam Kneeling Pad is rugged enough to resist discoloration and tears, even if it does get dragged around in the dirt (as it should). About the size of a newspaper, this pad is not particularly big, so it’s great for maneuvering into small spots. The dozen available shades are cheery—but even more fun is the gift of non-achy knees.

This indestructible, razor-sharp trowel is a garden workhouse, ideal for planting, weeding, and breaking up soil. In truth it’s a multi-tool, working as a hand shovel when backfilling transplants, a blade when perforating a bag of soil or fertilizer, and an edger when tidying up rowdy borders. (Its versatility is also why it’s an indispensable addition to an urban gardening kit.) The trowel comes in a range of lengths. But we found the 14-inch version was long enough to make short work of substantial holes, without the need for a bigger, bulkier shovel. One staffer reported that, on a group planting day, a neighbor liked her trowel so much that she took it home—so do warn the recipient to keep tabs on their new score.

These supple goatskin gloves count passionate garden enthusiasts among their many fans. They’re tough but not bulky (unlike many leather work gloves). The material will stretch and mold to one’s hands after a few afternoons of gardening, making them fit like, well, a glove. They arrive almost blindingly white, and even though a rinse in the hose will take off large debris, they do brown with age. If your favorite gardener is a more practical type, our guide to the best gardening gloves offers a handful of great options.

Sure, a baseball hat will do. And so would a hiking hat. But a more-stylish choice is this wide-brimmed straw hat, handmade in the Bolgatanga region of northern Ghana. Because the brim is straight, it blocks the sun but not the sight line. And one needn’t worry about the hat flopping off, thanks to the comfy leather chin strap. Staff writer Samantha Schoech has worn hers while beaching, hiking, and gardening. She’s even dunked it in a river (for cooling and shaping purposes), and it still looks great.

Help the garden lover in your life get a grip on weeds. The double-sided blade on this weeder slides back and forth under the soil, nipping weeds at their roots and loosening packed dirt. It’s basically a more versatile version of Wirecutter’s favorite stirrup hoe. Handles are sold separately (currently for $12 to $50, depending on length), can be easily switched out with a click, and are compatible with all Interlocken hand tools. A short handle works best for more-precise work; a longer, back-saving handle is best for big areas. Samantha has used hers with the 7-inch short handle for at least five years to tackle thick spring weeds, and it remains her favorite tool in the shed.

For gardeners who spend their late winters and springs germinating seeds for summer gardens, this simple, two-piece wooden pot press is the gift that keeps on giving. Whenever one is struck with the desire to plant something, they’ll just need a long strip of newspaper and about 15 seconds. By wrapping the wooden dowel in paper and then pressing it into the base, your favorite gardener can make a suitable, 1.75-inch seed vessel. Once the baby sprouts are ready to transplant, your pal can protect delicate root systems by sticking the entire pot in the ground, where it will eventually disintegrate.

Each of these reusable and pest-proof tins is stocked with 10 packets of organic seeds in a range of clever, useful themes, like herbal teas (lemon balm, licorice mint) and prepper survival (bush beans, sugar pumpkins). Peaceful Valley also has a super-knowledgeable staff ready to answer questions, and it has a library of how-to videos for all things garden-related. And if the seeds don’t germinate, the company will replace them.

These cheery buckets are the way to go when it comes to toting pretty much anything in the garden, including—but not limited to—weeds, clippings, transplants, and compost. These buckets are made of a bendy rubberized plastic that doesn’t crack or fade, and their flexibility allows users to squeeze the handles together and carry them one-handed (provided they are not full of rocks). Samantha has them in three sizes, and she uses them regularly. And she doesn’t stress about needing to put them away after each use, since they also look great just sitting around. In the offseason, they happily pitch in as ice buckets, laundry baskets, and toy bins.

We feel like a 19th-century gardener when tending to our plants with this handsome brass watering wand. And that’s worth every bit of the very steep price tag. Made in England of solid, rustproof brass, with a ball valve to control the water flow, the 24-inch shaft allows the waterer to reach faraway plants without blasting them with a high-pressure nozzle. Depending on the location of one’s spigot, this wand also eliminates the need for outdoor watering cans on patios or decks. The flow is rain-like, the brass is shiny, and—let’s face it—it looks pretty good just lying around on the gravel.

Although gardeners love getting their hands in the dirt, they don’t necessarily want to look like they do. Enter a good, healing hand cream. Weleda Skin Food is a longtime Wirecutter favorite for very good reason. It soothes dry, chapped skin with a thick mixture of calendula and chamomile in a base of oils and beeswax. And it contains no parabens or other questionable chemical nasties. This cream also has a nice, subtle scent—yet no synthetic fragrance—that works even for the scent-averse.

We love finding gifts that are unusual, thoughtful, and well vetted. See even more gift ideas we recommend.

This article was edited by Hannah Morrill and Jennifer Hunter.