10 gift ideas for the gardener on your holiday shopping list

Jun 07, 2024

Garden Soxx are mesh bags that are filled with potting mix to become portable gardens.

Gardeners are usually pretty easy when it comes to buying them gifts.

They tend to need a lot of stuff to get the job done, plus there’s always something new to try.

If you’re stuck anyway, here are 10 possibilities for the gardener on your 2022 holiday gift list (or if you’re a gardener, some ideas to add to your wish list).

GardenSoxx is a novel alternative to container gardening – planting in soil-filled mesh bags.

This product is a tubular polypropylene bag that you stretch out, fill with planting mix, and plant into cut holes. It’s portable, highly “breathable” for plant roots, ideal for gardeners with limited space, and can be emptied, folded up, and reused for years.

GardenSoxx comes in different sizes and in kits that include drip irrigation tape and a filler tube. A kit that offers 25 feet of tubular rows along with the filler and irrigation tape sells for $60 on the GardenSoxx website.

The National Garden Bureau gave GardenSoxx its Green Thumb Award as the best new gardening product of 2022.

Harvi planters can be stacked or grouped to create a space-saving container garden.

Another option for the space-challenged gardener is a Harvi Garden.

Harvi is a sturdy, 16-by-32-inch hard-polymer container that can be used singly or stacked and grouped to make a container garden.

The units are self-watering with a reservoir and capillary mat in the bottom.

They’re frost-resistant (i.e. can be left outside in winter), have outlets to drain off any excess water, and come in five different colors.

The brainchild of a pair of Philadelphia gardeners and an Irish engineer, Harvi containers are $185 each and available through the Harvi Gardens website and Facebook marketplace.

The Rotoshovel is a new hand-held power tool that marries a trowel and an auger.

A Rotoshovel is a new power tool that attaches a small, narrow shovel blade to a battery-powered auger.

It’s an 18-inch-long, five-pound, hand-held tool powered by a 12-volt rechargeable battery and is primarily geared to digging holes for bulbs and small transplants like annuals. However, it’s also good for digging holes for signs, small posts, and trenches.

Described by its inventors as a “handheld automatic shovel,” Rotoshovel sells for $170, which includes a battery and carrying case. A bigger, jackhammer-like “Rotoshovel Max” is in the works for $400.

Rotoshovel won a Retailer’s Choice award at the 2022 AmericanHort Cultivate industry show as a new product with the potential to become a garden-center best-seller.

Aquapots are new sturdy ceramic self-watering pots.

Another 2022 Cultivate-show Retailer’s Choice award is this new line of high-quality ceramic pots that are self-watering.

Invented and patented by Michigan landscape architect Jack Barnwell and debuting under the Proven Winners brand (best known for cutting-edge plants), AquaPots hold enough water in their reservoirs to go a week or more between waterings.

They have overflow openings to head off overwatering, don’t leave water-ring stains on decks or patios, and are freeze-resistant. Pots can be emptied and turned upside down over winter.

The line features more than 20 colors and finishes.

Long’s Nursery in Palmyra and Nolt Garden Center in Lebanon are among garden centers listed as carrying AquaPots, or they’re available through the Proven Winners website.

AquaPots are a bit pricey at $249-$259 each but are supposedly more durable, pit-resistant, and long-lived than most other ceramic options.

The We the Wild gift pack includes three gardening products for organic gardeners.

A third 2022 Cultivate Retailer’s Choice award-winner is a new line of organic fertilizers called We the Wild.

Brandon Kuykendall, nursery manager at Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses in Monroe Twp., says a three-product We the Wild gift pack that Ashcombe is carrying would make a good holiday choice, especially for those growing houseplants.

The gift pack includes a 17-ounce bottle of Protect Spray with Neem Oil (an organic bug-killer and fungicide), a 14-ounce package of Enrich Powder (a granular fertilizer made from earthworm castings), and an 8-ounce bottle of Grow Concentrate (a liquid organic fertilizer).

“The Grow Concentrate doesn’t have that awful odor that usually accompanies organic fertilizers,” Kuykendall adds.

The three-product gift pack sells for $36.99.

True Leaf Market Seed Co.'s "Emergency Heirloom Bug Out Seed Bag” includes 34 packs of vegetable seeds for $38.06.

Gardeners can always use seeds for the next season, and lots of catalog companies oblige by offering bundles and gift packs that are ideal for holiday giving.

True Leaf Market Seed Co., for example, this year has an “Emergency Heirloom Bug Out Seed Bag” that includes 34 packs of vegetable seeds (22,000 seeds altogether) for $38.06 as well as a 10-pack Heirloom Culinary Herb Seeds Collection for $14.29 and a “Save the Bees” blend of 19 wildflowers for $13.18 that’s geared to pollinator gardeners.

Park Seed has a Vegetable Seed Bio Dome Collection that includes a 60-cell seedling tray with dome and eight packs of vegetable seeds for $70.

Pinetree Garden Seeds has an Easy to Grow Garden Kit aimed at beginning vegetable gardeners that includes two seed-starting booklets, peat pellets, wooden labels, and 11 packs of veggie seeds for $50.

And Harris Seeds offers several varieties of Grow Gardens seed kits that come in recycled egg cartons. One popular one is the $15.25 Grow Cocktails kit that includes six seed packets of herbs that flavor cocktails, plus starter soil, wooden labels, and cocktail recipes.

Not sure what your gardener might like? Most seed companies offer gift cards to let giftees pick out their own seed choices.

Or you could put together your own collection from garden-center seed racks or make seeds part of a homemade gardener gift basket that includes a trowel, garden gloves, a bottle of fertilizer, and other smaller items.

Two products designed to make gardening more comfortable are the Ames Lawn Buddy, left, and a Garden Kneeler.

Robert Kadas, owner of Highland Gardens in Lower Allen Twp., says this combination kneeling pad and portable bench makes a good gift for gardeners who aren’t as mobile (or ache-free) as they used to be.

“This is a must for any gardener, especially since none of us are getting any younger,” Kadas says.

Highland’s Gardener Select Kneeler Seat is a bench when turned one way and a padded kneeler with support arms when turned the other. It retails for $50.

Kadas also mentions the Ames Lawn Buddy, which doubles as a molded-plastic wagon to haul gardening goods and a portable seat.

“Maybe most important, it has a spot to put your favorite beverage,” Kadas adds.

The Ames Lawn Buddy cart sells for $100.

This is the packed houseplant display at Lowe's -- more choices than ever.

The houseplant craze continues, so odds are the “plant parent” on your holiday gift list would welcome just one more.

The convenience bonus is that garden centers are offering more choices than ever – way more than just the basic green foliage plants of yesteryear … and in a variety of prices, too.

Even box stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s are carrying all sorts of colorful succulents, showy calatheas and stromanthes, popular fiddleleaf figs, bonsai starter plants, and even easy-to-grow orchids.

It’s hard to go too wrong when you give a gardener a new plant.

Each year brings a new crop of garden books in addition to lots of evergreen classics.

One other low-fail-odds idea is a gardening book, of which there are many already and a raft of new ones each year.

If you know your giftee’s particular niche (edibles, native plants, succulents, etc.), you’ll win extra points by zeroing in on the latest, greatest book in that area.

Some good new titles of 2021-22 include Kelly D. Norris’ “New Naturalism” (a gardening-with-nature book from Cool Springs Press); Workman’s “American Roots” (a design-idea book of inspirations from some of America’s best home gardeners); Meg Cowden’s “Plant Grow Harvest Repeat” (the latest rundown on how to be successful in veggie gardening), Shelly Cramm’s “My Father is the Gardener” (a devotional approach to the Bible using the avenue of gardening and plants), and Marianne Wilburn’s “Tropical Plants and How to Love Them” (all about growing showy specimens from warm-weather climates).

Other classic best-sellers include Dr. Douglas Tallamy’s “Bringing Nature Home” (Timber Press, 2009); Mel Bartholomew’s “All New Square Foot Gardening II” (Cool Springs Press, 2013); Ken Druse’s “Planthropology” (Crown Publishing, 2008), and David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth’s “What’s Wrong with My Plants?” (Timber Press, 2009).

A Hershey Gardens membership also gets you in free at 345 other American public gardens.

For $50, you can buy your giftee a full year of unlimited strolling through the 23 acres of Hershey Gardens, plus 15-percent gift-shop discounts, two newsletters, and an annual member reception.

But the membership also gets you in free to some 345 other U.S. public gardens that are part of the American Horticultural Society’s Reciprocal Admissions Program – a nice bonus for anyone who likes to tour gardens in his or her travels.

Two-person Hershey Gardens memberships are available for $85, and family/grandfamily memberships for $115.

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