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There are some manual garden tools you just can’t live without, like this varied tranche of horticultural essentials.

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best garden tools 2020: Burgon & Ball leaf rake

During the course of spring and summer we’ll be adding new products to this ever-expanding list of our favourite garden management tools, from secateurs, loppers, snippers and branch saws to spades, trowels, rakes, edgers, weeders and a variety of excellent hand tools.

To make this extraordinarily comprehensive guide easier to digest, we’ve sorted all the products on the page into four main categories: Pruning Tools, Digging Tools, Ground Care Tools and Hand Tools.

Although admittedly quite boring, these are all essential garden accoutrements that you need to know about because – oh yeah, baby – that’s how we get down. 

No matter how thorny the garden task, and no matter how weedy you are, these are the garden tools to get the job done.

Help, the product I want is out of stock

As you may discover, some of our favourite gardening products not surprisingly keep selling out. Hence, if you find a product we’ve reviewed that isn’t available via the provided retail link, then try these retailers who usually stock some very good alternatives.

In the UK:

Amazon

B&Q

Waitrose Garden

Thompson Morgan

Crocus

Van Meuwen

Suttons

Dobies

Harrod Horticultural

Tooled UP

 In the US:

Walmart

Sears

Home Depot

Lowe’s

BEST PRUNING & CUTTING TOOLS

Before we start, we should address at least one particular piece of garden jargon that applies to both loppers and secateurs: bypass and anvil. 

Bypass secateurs and loppers have blades that are designed to pass each other smoothly as they cut, like scissors. They are perfect for green wood and delicate stems, as they give precise, clean cuts and avoid damaging or bruising the branch. 

Anvil loppers and secateurs, on the other hand, have one sharpened blade that cuts down on a flat hard plastic or rubber block, rather like a small chopping board. Anvil-equipped pruners are great for dead wood and dry, hard, old growth that needs cutting back. Mind, most amateur gardeners will happily make do with either mechanism since they both essentially perform much the same task. 

Now you know your bypass from your anvil, read on for the lowdown on the best quality manual snippers and cutters currently on the market.

Although they’re heavier, a little larger and more expensive than the majority of secateurs, this premium model screams quality all the way from the high-grade aluminium body and ultra-sharp TruEdge bypass blades to the tactile, ergonomically designed cork-covered handle.

The Quantum’s weighty feel and larger size makes them more suitable for gardeners with bigger hands but you’ll never rue the day you stumped up the readies to buy a pair. The cork handles provide maximum grip – especially when your hands are a bit sweaty – and they work really well with gloves, too. The blade slices through green stalks and stems