Gifts for Flower Gardeners
Suggestions for the Best Most Useful Practical Educational Fun and Extravagant Garden Gifts for the Hobby Gardener on Your Gift List
Dec 4, 2006
Flower gardeners are good people who deserve lots and lots of gifts from adoring friends, family, distant relatives and also neighbors, coworkers and acquaintances. Use these suggestions for gardening gifts whenever you are in the mood for gift giving (we hope this happens often and a lot!) Your favorite flower gardener is sure to enjoy any or need we say all of these suggestions -- whether you are looking for something useful and practical, charming and beautiful, silly and fun, luxurious and extravagant, or just plain super special and unique, let this be your garden gift shopping guide for any season and any reason.
Flowering Plants
Of course, flowering plants make great gifts. Look for healthy foliage and plants still in bud rather than full bloom. African violets are easy to grow and are collectible, too. Poinsettias, paperwhite narcissus, and cyclamen are usually discarded after blooming, but amaryllis, holiday cactus, orchids, and jasmine can be kept from year to year.
Flower Gardening Books and Magazines
Flower gardening addicts will enjoy Tracy Di-Sabato Aust’s newly expanded book, “The Well Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques.” For the organic flower gardener, go with “Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web” by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. Both from Timber Press, 2006.
Flower gardeners might like an extended subscription to a favorite gardening magazine, or try something new. “Birds and Blooms” celebrates simple, homespun backyard beauty with birds, butterflies, and of course, flowers.
Educational Gifts for Gardeners
Your local community college or recreation department may offer classes in Gardening, Horticulture, Landscaping, or Garden Design.
Most botanical gardens and arboreta offer memberships as well as gardening lectures and workshops. Many have tempting gardening and flower themed gift shops to help you shop, too.
Flower Garden Tours, Travel and Shows
Inspire your favorite flower gardener with an English garden tour, or a trip to see the spring flowering bulbs at Keukenhof . Spring flower shows are always a treat; the world’s largest indoor flower show happens in Philadelphia every March.
Gardening Tools as Gifts
Your lucky flower gardener might appreciate a garden cart, a chipper shredder, a compost tumbler or an indoor vermicomposting worm bin.
Hand tools can be problematic gifts. Among trowels, spades, and hand pruners, one size often does not fit all. For example, there are many styles of the popular Felco hand pruners. It’s difficult to select the best fit for somebody else. Instead, consider a gift certificate or perhaps a min max thermometer or a soil thermometer, a rain gauge or a set of sturdy plant labels; compost aerators, soil test kits, and plant stakes are also good choices.
More Flower Gardening Tools and Toys
Toys for the amateur propagator: a seed starting kit and seed starter potting mix; rooting hormone, grow lights, a horticultural heating mat, a cold frame for hardening off transplants.
More flower garden toys: a microwaveable flower press, a bulb forcing vase, an attractive cachepot. How about a wind chime, birdbath, or comfy garden bench?
Extravagant Flower Gardening Gifts
Big ticket gifts for flower gardeners: deer fencing around the perimeter of your property, a greenhouse with automated heating and ventilation, or an architect designed conservatory addition to your home.
Some flower gardeners might thrill to a water garden installation, a drip irrigation system, or a truckload of mulch or compost.
The Absolutely Perfect Gift for Your Favorite Flower Gardener
Unique and Priceless: coupons only you can give, such as an hour of gardening muscle or babysitting time, an hour’s uncomplaining chauffeuring to the garden center… You know what it would be.
Happy Gift Giving!
Sources: shop your local nurseries and garden centers or try mail order catalogs such as Gardeners Supply, Charley’s Greenhouse and Garden, or A.M. Leonard (in no particular order.)
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