Reach for a helping hand
A disability doesn't mean you have to give up gardening, here is a selection of the latest in useful tools.

Those who can work in the garden without a second thought are very lucky.  Most of us are caught out by aches and pains at some point in our lives, but spare a thought for gardeners with more permanent problems.  In Britain alone, ther are more than 10 million disabled people, and one in three over-55s have a disability of some sort.  Whether the difficult is temporary  or more permanent, there are ways and means to carry on gardening and here are some ideas:

Peta Easi-Grip

Firm grip: Peta Easi-Grip garden tools, around £10, have soft plastic non-slip pistol grip handles which keep the wrist in a neutral stress-free position.  Ideal for gardeners with reduced grip strewngth and/oir reduced wrist flexibility.  Alternatively, transform existing tools using the Peta Add-On handles (£15 for two) that strap to the handles (01376 573476; http://www.peta-uk.com/acatalog/Assistive_Garden_Tools.html).


Lightweight tools: modern manufacturing methods and materials bring innovative new gardening tools to the market each year.

Darlac bamboo-handled tools

Fiskars' range of lightweight reinforced plastic/fibreglass tools is called Inspirations, from £4.99 (0115 927 7335; fishkars.com).
Darlac has launched a great range of 15 bamboo-handled tools with carbon steel heads, lightweight but extremely durable from around £5 for hand tools (01753 547790; darlac.com).

Wilkinsons Sword Lite Alloy hoe

Wilkinsons Sword offers a range of Lite Alloy tools, from £10, including hand tools and a long handled hoe (0845 894 1599; wilkinsonswordtools.co.uk).

Posture perfect: Choosing tools that fit the user helps to prevent aches and pains.  The new Fiskars telescopic spade and fork, around £40 (from January 2013) allows you to adjust the handle length to suit your height.

Arms reach tools: it's all very well having long-handled tools, but often you need to be at plant level to carry out the rest of the task.  Try these devisces for more convenient handling:
The Darlac Multi Pick, around £14, is great for picking  up all sorts of things around the garden and has suction pads for better grip;

Darlac multipick

The Snapper from Darlac, from £30, holds and cuts stems while you work, enabling you to work one-handed from a distance.  Ideal for light pruncing, fruit picking and deadheading.

Yeoman Grabrake

The Yeoman Grabrake, around £20 in autumn promotions, is a new product designed to make light work of clearing leaves and debris and reduce stooping (01905 791984; yeomangarden.com).


Cushion the blow: Think about the most comfortable position to work in.  Burgon & Ball's latest range of Kneelo knee pads are excellent if you struggle to kneel on hard surfaces.  Insorporating memory foam technology, the ultra-soft layers cushion and protect your knees while kneeling on stony or hard ground. It comes in six colours £17 and there is also a Kneeler cushion (0114 233 8262; burgon and ball).

Low-effort pruning: when it comes to pruning, just having sharp secateurs can make all the difference.  Tired, blunt tools require more elbow grease and can risk user injury.  For simple pruning, choose lightweight tools.  Ratchet pruners or geared pruners reduce the impact on wrists and hands.  the Wilkinson Sword Geared  anvil loppers £40, have lightweight telescopic handles and geared pruning blades for easier pruning.

The Burgon and Ball ratchet pruner, £18, has a three-stage ratchet that is easy to operate and ideal for pruning.

Burgon and Ball ratchet pruner

The Handy ratchet lopper from Darlac, at £18, weighs around 500g but cuts up to 35mm stems with ease.
Look out for the new Fiskars Quantum bypass pruner that has a lovely geared action to reduce user input.

Raise the bar: move your garden closer to working height with the new range of Forest Garden Accessible gardening products (from spring 2013).  There's a trough and cold frame on legs that can also be used as a potting bench, pllus a raised corner planter, from £100. Forest Garden also offers as assembly service for around £60 (0844 2489801; forestgarden.co.uk).

The horticultural charity Thrive works to help people living with a disability or mental ill health to transform their lives through gardening (0118 988 5688; thrive.org.uk).

Tried and Tested - Widgets that Work

With Christmas a-coming, Liz Dobbs from The Telegraph picks some ingenious gadgets and handy tools that make everyday gardening tasks a bit easier.


Tomato turns: these galvanised steel spirals supported our cordon tomatoes in the greenhouse this year without theneed to tying in - the stems grew up within the spiral shape. By Bosmere, from garden centres. See: http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/steel-tomato-spiral-rod.html

Fleece preservers: Crop covers such as garden fleece need to be secured to the ground to be effective but pegging them down invariably means the fabric gets torn.  These nifty clips are an alternative that will extend the life of your crop covers.  Simply slip them on along the edge of the fabric and you will then have a row of eyelets to push the pegs into.  Various quantities are available, with and without pegs, from £5.49 for 10 (gardening-naturally.com)

It's a wrap: Rather than wrestle with sheets of fleece and string when insulating borderline hardy shrubs or container specimens, use garden fleece plant jackets with a drawstring or zip.  Then just put over the plant, pack with any other insulation and pull the string or zip up.  Haxnicks has a good range with a drawstring and toggle, widely availale in garden centres, while Harrod Horticultural sells zipped fleeces online.

Something borrowed: A pointing trowel, designed for pointing brickwork, makes a precise, yet versatile and lightweight, garden tool.  Use the pointed tip to remove weeds between plants and to make short seed drills.  The edge of the blade will quickly skim the soil surface to clear small annual weeds prior to planting; the actual trowel is suitable for planting small plants or bulbs. 

App alternative: This planting wheel, £5.25, is a handy memory jogger for more than 30 veg.  Turn to the veg in queestion and it will remind you when to sow or plant, how deep and how far apart. It wipes clean and there's even a hook to hang it up in your garden shed (http://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/planting-wheel-and-grow-your-own-vegetables-book-pid5386.html).

Strong and hairy: Coir string, used by hop growers, has a fibrous texture so is effective as a vetical support for cucumber plants.  It also blends in well when used as a plant tie in the garden.  A 500g hank of hop twine can be bought by mail order from Baileys Home & Garden for £6.50 plus £4.50p&p (call 01989 563015 or email sales@baileyshome.com as it isn't on their website.


Wigwams without ties: This simple piece of plastic was recommended to me by an elderly neighbour as an easy way to make a wigwam for sweet peas.  You just push the bamboo canes into the slots, rather than having to tie them together.  The Tenax version, about £3 to £5, is made of soft plastic so is malleable enough to take the canes. From garden centres and tenax.co.uk.

Tension without stress: Training wires for climbers, supporting vines or canes need to be really taut to do their job.  In the past that meant twisting the ends of wires with pliers but now the Gripple takes the sdtrain - you simply poke the nylon wire down the holes as instructed.  Can be used for grapevines, raspberry canes or ornamental climbers against walls.  To understand how it works, there's a good video on gripplegarden.com, where you can buy direct (a starter pack of four Gripples, 100'/30m of nylon wire and four vine eyes is £16.79). 


Welly neat: Wellitop, £5, is a novel device that fits into the top of a pair of Wellingtons, keeping the boots together and upright (as well as free from spiders).  There is a carrying handle so you can move boots around easily and a cord to hand them up (neatideasdirect.co.uk).

Go digital: An essential bit of kit for a greenhouse, a max/min thermometer shows you the maximum and minimum temperature.  I prefer digital ones as they are easier to read. Some also have a weather station which measures humidity as well.

Hairy pots:  These pots are made of coir and you plant both the pot and the plant - the roots grow through the pot and eventually the coir rots down into the soil.  Apparently, they're brilliant for sowing plants into the ground but the pots are rather bulky for planting plants into containers, such as herb gardens.  Coir pots and accessories can be obtained from hairypotplants.co.uk.

Name that plant:  Using the Brother labelling kit is invaluable.  The printed labels are easier to read than handwritten ones and can be reused.  These can be stuck onto colour-coded plastic laels (depending whether they are destined for: the allotment, greenhouse or garden).  For large quantities of coloured labels, try lbsgardenwarehouse.co.uk.  The Brother GL-200 Garden Labelling Kit with 50 white labels, £47 (labelzone.co.uk)

Take a turn: A sturdy rotary soil seive will sift soil (or garden compost or other organic matter), andmake it physically more suitable as an ingredient in a potting mix.  The sieve is fairly hard work to use, as you need to turn the handle to push the material through, but setting the device over a wheelbarrow helps to keep it steady and collects the sifted material.  Prices vary, the best seen is £34 plus £5.45 p&p (http://www.recycleworks.co.uk/soil-sieves-sifters-c-259.html). (To initially seive home-made compost I use an old freezer basket, chucking the bits which won't go through straight back into the composter for another day).

A stronger support:  The new Harrod Slot & Lock system has locking screws to hold aluminium tubes firmly in place so you can build sturdy cages to support net covers. The cage is quick to assemble, easy to move around raised beds, and strong.  The optional extra of a slip-on butterfly net cover is a real time saver, it pulls over the cage in an instant and fits snugly.  The system comes in a range of sizes, the smallest (4ft x ft/1.2m x 1.2m) is £22.95 for the frame, £33.90 with the slip-on net (harrodhorticultural.com).

Scratch and scrape: After testing more than 30 hand-weeding tools, the Burgon & Ball stainless steel weeding finger , £8.95, emerges as the favourite.  Lightweight but effective, the side of the curved blade can be used to scrape off moss from brick walls and decking, while the tip is perfect for scratching out weeds in awkward rockery crevices and from between paving slabs (http://www.burgonandball.com/shop/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=83)


Also this looks an interesting site: http://gardening.jen99.com/ (no relation)