English Garden Gifts for Anglophile Gardeners

British-made, stainless steel gardening tools from Rittenhouse are not your average, garden variety set of garden tools. Different from any gardening tools you may have seen at your local garden center, they include a round, two-tine fork for loosening hard packed soils, a "widger" planting, weeding any lots of other tasks, a narrow scoop for planting and a weeding "finger" for winkling intruders out of difficult places or from around delicate plants. Think of them as conversation pieces which just happen to be garden tools.

An all purpose, eco-friendly, collapsible bag with frame is made from recycled, waterproof materials and sits flat - in the trunk of a car or on a garden path. Gardeners can use this lightweight carryall to move plants around the garden or home from the garden center. It's also handy for carrying plant foods and gardening tools around the back yard or the back forty. Serious English gardeners are serious about all their equipment and this carryall, which folds flat when not in use, is just the thing to keep everything in order.

No English Rose would head out to her garden without a smart pair of protective gloves. These tailored suede gloves with 100% cotton canvas cuffs are stylish and practical. The deep cotton cuffs come in a variety of colors and can be monogrammed with three initials. They have button and loop fastenings, to keep out stray leaves and garden dirt, reinforced thumbs and brushed metal details. The gloves come in three women's sizes.

Just the thing for helping Mom and Dad or Grandma and Grandpa in the garden. Child-sized gardening gloves look just like the grownup versions. They're made of coated polyester with leather fingers and palms and leather reinforced knuckles. And they're not just for play but to protect little fingers (2.5 inches long) when they help with the weeding or plant their own vegetable patch.

Amazing that such delicate and beautiful flowers are such aggressive fighters but a rose by any other name still has its thorns. Professional rose gardeners know how to protect themselves from cuts, scratches and puncture wounds. These puncture resistant, synthetic leather rose growers gloves have padded palms,reinforced fingertips and elbow-length gauntlet cuffs to protect forearms.

When English Rose's tend their English roses, they don't tend to lose their delicate English coloring. One reason, of course, is the frequency of damp, gray weather - great for plants and for complexions both. But when the sun does shine, no self respecting English gardener would tend the herbaceous borders without wearing a sun hat. This broad-brimmed hat from Coolibar has a sun protection factor of 50+.

There's something of the "Mad Men" era about this sweet and colorful gardening apron from Angela. It has loads of pockets for tools and gloves and a sort of flouncy bottom so you can kneel in comfort. As a holiday season gift, its bright color can lift gloomy winter spirits with thoughts of puttering around the garden like Beaver Cleaver's mother.

There's no escaping the fact that the keen gardener spends a lot of time kneeling on paths and in the dirt and grass, plucking weeds and planting. This 1 1/4" thick padded cushion from Black & Decker has a soft celled double elastic cushion wrapped in an easy to clean Polycoat reinforced outer covering. Any gardener you know will appreciate the thought - and so will his or her knees.

The right sort of garden ornament makes an English garden complete. You could get serious and plant a classical statue or a bird bath among the fritillaries, but gardening friends with a well-developed sense of irony will, no doubt, appreciate a characterful garden gnome to tuck in some surprising corner of the estate. We like Homer, ready for a days work with his woodsman's ax and lantern. He's cast of long lasting resin and hand painted.

With all the gear and costuming taken care of it's time for a bit of inspiration. Creating an English cottage garden, with its apparently casual blend of flowers, colored branches and foliage, is harder than it looks. And the mild English climate, which lacks the extremes of hot and cold that American gardeners have to face makes a mixture of all kinds of exotic and ordinary plants possible. Margaret Hensel's well illustrated book is full of good advice to help American gardeners create the look using readily available plants.