Which is the best garden trowel?

• The floral design is the prettiest but the round tip is better suited to shoveling soil into a flower pot than extracting a reluctant weed from a flower border.
• The two left-hand trowels are reasonably pointed and the soil will not stick to them. But the metal is not thick enough and user testing soon bent both of them just below the handle.
• So the BULLDOG Tanged Rockery Trowel is the best. I don’t have a rockery but it is great for removing weeds from just about anywhere in the garden. It is sharp and strong and it lets you remove ‘the enemy’ without damage to precious plants. Bought last month, the recommended retail price was £9.60 (inc vat) in the UK. 

I love to see pebbles in a garden. They are so much nicer than concrete blocks, concrete slabs or any other type of concrete for that matter!

But how should pebbles be chosen? Is is like going to a wallpaper shop and choosing the nicest pattern and the nicest colour? Well it could be. But the first thing is to find out if a  local stone is available. It is likely to harmonize with your soil but more than this it gives a uniqueness and sense of belonging to your garden: granite in a granite district; slate in a slate district, flint in a flint district. This is the sustainable choice, the green choice and the best choice. Go for it!

Download photograph of pebbles in garden centre

Here is a classic garden bench. It was made in the last century but you can find similar benches today – and can be pretty confident of your great grandchildren inheriting them in excellent condition. Just make sure the paint does not flake off, especially from the feet.

But what do you think of the green? It tugs the heart strings of everyone who remembers Jaguar’s great days but some people say ‘you should not use green paint in gardens’. Their point is that because the other garden greens keep changing there is a danger of your chosen green looking out of place.

Tell us what you think!

Shredded bark is an attractive idea: it’s recycling, it keeps the weeds down, it lets the water through to the aquifer (ie its good for SUDS – Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems) and it rots down to increase the humus content of the topsoil. But it is acid. This is good if you are growing rhododendrons and other ericaceous plants but it is not good for most herbaceous plants.

Shredded bark can also be used as a path surface, with two additional disadvantages: (1) it looks folksy and not like a ‘proper path’ (2) it has to be replaced when it rots down.

So, as with most things, shredded bark is a great product when its used properly and a big disappointment when its used wrongly.

Download shredded bark photograph

Welcome to the CrinkleCrankle Blog!

We plan to review garden products and tell you what’s hot and what’s not. The aim is to help you find high-quality products: tools, furniture, tubs, lighting, fountains, construction materials – everything to do with the garden.

• If you are a buyer, please tell us what you like and what you want.
• If you are a supplier, please tell us about your oldest, newest and best products.

Some products have stood the test of time: the primitive ard in the Egyptian painting, above, was invented about 4,500 years ago and is still used in some parts of the world; the girl’s white dress is still beautiful; the date palm is still the most widely planted tree in West Asia. But new garden products are being launched all the time and we look forward to hearing about them and passing information to our readers and helping them to make good gardens.