12 Must-Have Tools for Your Garden

With glass walls abounding in modern-style homes, the synthesis between indoor and outdoor environs is a big part of the look and the lifestyle. With this in mind, we query: Modern liver, maintenance giver, how does your garden grow?

We will pardon answers more complicated, perhaps less cheery than that silver bells and cockleshells stuff, especially from those who don't expect a paid gardener to do all the work.

If you are a DYI kind of gal or guy, perhaps you rise to the task and quote Churchill's promised message to FDR in World War II: "Give us the tools and we will finish the job." If so, allow us to quote another great leader from across the pond, Napoleon Bonaparte, who opined in his native tongue, "La carrière ouverte aux talents (The tools to him that can handle them)."

But which tools? Fear not, industrious modernist—Eichler Network home improvement editor Tanja Kern is one of us, and she has sought out the latest in quality gardening tools for 'Summer Spruce,' her feature in the new Summer '18 issue of CA-Modern magazine.

The story profiles a dozen garden tools from 12 different manufacturers, covering everything from gloves to hose accessories to a quartet of different cutters. The contents of your garden, along with your skill level and your current set of gardening tools, will determine which would be most useful to you.

"I used to have a black thumb," Kern recently admitted in assessing her own past gardening skills. "I'd have a hard time just remembering to water."

Perhaps, back in those woeful days, if Tanja had invested in a couple of the dozen items, maybe watering would have been easier to remember—or at least easier to do. The latter is certainly the case if you're unspooling the durable, aluminum-alloy hose reel that she now recommends from Eley, priced starting from $179.

A tool's long lifetime is a big thing for Kern, who tires of buying and then replacing work tools. She recently bought a second Touch'n'Flow rain wand from Dramm for $20.