Gardening

Gardener’s know when they have found their ideal trowel. It’s a similar feeling to that of a violinist stroking a Stradivarius. It just feels “right”, like it belongs in only your hands. A great trowel is evenly balanced (blade with the handle) and sits nicely so that the weight of it doesn’t feel heavy. A smaller blade will often have a smaller handle and be lighter weight for smaller hands. The handle has to feel comfortable and be well-formed to fit your hand (either turned hardwood or synthetic plastic material) or else nasty blisters will put a halt to work in the garden. Holding a well-designed and crafted trowel in hand should be an energizing feeling.

When picking a great trowel, blade materials affect the amount of after work clean up and frequency of sharpening. Are they smooth, rust-proof and hold their edge?

Does the trowel have shaped wooden handles (lacquered for protection from water) or a cushiony gel-filled, spongy, contoured plastic grip in a bright color?

Can you safely stick the trowel handle into your back pocket while doing other jobs in the garden? Versatile trowels can be used in a dagger motion for bulb or transplant planting or in a scooping motion for soil moving. Then many trowels can be flipped over and the end used to tamp the soil.

The trowel blade size should also be matched to the type of gardening job. Choose a narrower trowel (with depth markings) for bulb and transplant planting or a larger blade for big digging jobs or planting perennials. Pick a serrated edged trowel for weeding and opening fertilizer bags. Hmmm, a gardener needs more than one trowel? You bet.

Many new trowels are ergonomically designed to keep the hand in a comfortable neutral position to ease digging strain on wrists, arms and hands. Some handles are angled to change accommodate a less stressing angle, other trowels have long angled tangs (necks) between the blade and handle to also address the wrist angle. This tang clearance also saves knuckles from being scraped!

Lastly, many wooden handled trowels have metal ferrules on the handle. What’s a ferrule? It is from the Latin meaning “small iron bracelet”. This term is used to describe the circular clamp holding together fibers, wires or posts (like the metal ring at the end of a pencil to hold the eraser in place). For garden trowels, it is the metal ring securing the wooden handle to the metal tang. Often stainless or brass, good ferrules are deeply buried into the handle and glued into place.