A Garden Heirloom

Do you have a gardening tool that is extra special to you? I do. Whenever I’m in the garden, you’ll usually see me with a pair of hand pruners that I use for lightly shaping shrubs, removing tree suckers, or cutting fresh flowers.

As a garden writer and influencer, I am often provided with the newest model of hand pruners. In fact, I have quite a collection! While these hand pruners bear the labels of several makers, my favorite pair is in fact, my oldest.

At first glance, these orange-handled pruners aren’t fancy, and I don’t know who the maker is. The handles aren’t the most ergonomic, but function almost as well as the newer ones do. 

I refer to this old-fashioned pair of pruners as my ‘garden heirloom’ because they once belonged to my father-in-law who was an avid gardener. Like me, he didn’t have just one set of pruners, but three pair, which hung on the wall over his tool bench. All of his gardening tools were meticulously maintained and still work well today.

When my father-in-law couldn’t prune his plants any longer due to complications of ALS, he bequeathed his gardening tools to me. I started using his pruners to care for his garden once the disease had robbed him of the ability to do so himself. One of my favorite memories is having him would sit nearby and watch me cutting back his prized plants.

Several years later, those orange-handled pruners have a new home in my garden shed and I try to take of them as well as he did. So I use 3-IN-ONE Multi-Purpose Oil to lubricate them, which keeps them opening and closing smoothly. This makes pruning much easier while putting less stress on my hands.

While I miss spending time in the garden with my father-in-law, I always feel a little closer to him whenever I pull out my favorite family heirloom.

Do you have any garden tools that are special to you?

Four Days of Garden Gifts: Day 2 – Tools and Gear

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."