Your garden tool arsenal (for a large garden)

[d000hg]

As mentioned previously I've recently acquired a house with large garden. It's nestled on the edge of woodland and has a lot of mature trees. Dozens of leylandii (ugh) and 60+ foot sycamores, a couple of really big trees with trunks you could virtually put a doorway through... plus loads of really big shrubs that are virtually trees.
We also have about .5 acre lawn/paddock and a 100m wall which is currently covered in ivy - in fact ivy is rather a theme.

I've started buying tools, trying to avoid the temptation to buy cheap since they're going to get a lot of work, but I don't really know what I need. Some things are obvious, but I'm sure there are tools out there I never heard of which would make certain jobs easier.

So can people help me build up my 'shopping list'? What things you have or would have in my place, basically?

I've already got:

• A ride-on mower (yay!)
• A fairly small corded hedge trimmer
• A DeWalt reciprocating saw
• Ratchet extendable anvil loppers
• Long telescopic lopper + pruning saw (and a hand pruning saw)
• Wheelbarrow
• A spade and fork and springy rake
• Heavy duty gauntlets

To save your time, please just spout off(!) without bothering too hard to check for duplicates. If it's of interest, I'll update this first post with a collated list as we go. Maybe it could even end up in the wiki if it gains interest.

So far the loppers have been invaluable, and the reciprocating saw.

Cheers.

 

[London Mike 49]

Amongst my most used tools are;
1. Mattock with axe and spade ends
2. Dutch hoe for rapid weed removal
3. Spade (a border one for the narrow areas)
4. Fork (a good solid one that is forged)
5. Rake
6. Spring rake for the grass
7. Ratchet loppers
8. Ordinary loppers
9. Various secateurs
10. A folding pruning saw (absolutely invaluable)
11. Draw hoe for those hard to reach places that weeds grow
12. Weeding wand to burn up weeds on the patio
13. Weeding knives that scrape the weeds from the patio slabs
14. A couple of sprayers
15. Two watering cans, one for weed killing and one for watering
16. Turfing knife to sharpen up the grass edges and cut turf when laying it
17. A couple of shovels
18. Electric hedge trimmer
19. Electric grass trimmer
20. Hand shears
21. Fine shears for delicate trimming
22. Lots of gel to rub on my back!!

Mike

 

[r896neo]

1. Backpack leaf blower is a must.

2. Long reach hedge trimmer multi-tool with polesaw attachement and brushcutter attachment.

3.backpack sprayer.

Woodland can be maintained with a sprayer and brushcutter

 

[HawkEye244]

Never understood leaf blowers? Besides being a bit messy what do people have against leaves ??

 

[r896neo]

You obviously have never been responsible for a large garden.

A backpack leaf blower is probably a professional gardeners most valued tool. Its a huge Time saver for many jobs and indespensible from oct-dec

As for leaves, left on beds ec they are great and I'm all for it but they soon blow everywhere and will damage lawns if left and rot on hard surfaces and in drains etc. People that have never maintained a large garden have no idea of the huge volume of leaves in autumn.

 

[Burnerman]

....a decent quality petrol strimmer (4 stroke)
John

 

[HERTS P&D]

doohg- can you post some pictures of your garden. I would love to have a large garden.

Andy

 

[StephenOak]

There are some basics that most gardens need, e.g. forks, spades, secateurs, loppers, rakes, watering cans. A lot of the rest depends on what the garden is like and how you intend to use it.

My garden is c. a third of an acre, on the side of a valley, with lots of mature trees. So, as r89neo says, to protect the lawn (next to a 180yo copper beech) I need to clear the leaves that fall on it. and to make the seven (!) flights of steps safe I need to clear the leaves from them. So I use a leaf blower but in suction mode to collect & shred the leaves. I have built three leaf mould bins and every year I fill the one that is 2 cubic metres in capacity.

However on the slopes that are trees & shrubs I don't clear the leaves. So if d000hg has trees near the lawn / paddock and wants that to be at all nice then some sort of leaf removal tool (a blower of maybe something that the ride-on mower could tow) is essential.

With a 100m wall covered in ivy, a good sprayer will be needed. Ivy gets everywhere and keeps on coming back.

In another post d000hg talked about burning stuff he had cut down. Rather than that I would recommend a good shredder and composting the stuff. With that much space he could find a corner to make some compost bins out of scrap wood / pallets and just fill them and forget about them. After 6-9 months the contents should have broken down enough so that the contents of bins 1&2 can be merged into bin 3. Even if there is no need for compost now, in a few years it may well come in handy.

The other big benefit of shredder is in making some plants easier to handle once removed. Ivy that has been pulled off is springy and hard to handle. Holly, brambles, anything with thorns are hard to handle for a different reason. Once shredded they are just bits that neatly fit into a tub / sack /whatever.

Depending on what is to be done to the trees and which trees, the reciprocating saw may be sufficient. But to work on the larger ones a chainsaw will probably be needed.

 

[angelboy]

Don't underestimate the quality of the tools you'll need - so don't scrimp if you can afford it because you will end up buying twice like I did!

We have a large garden and I've built up my kit over the last 10 years. I started with Ryobi kit and it's OK for a little while but everything I bought has been used to destruction. I've slowly replaced everything with Stihl and they're a dream to use. They start first time, even after being laid up over the winter, they never miss a beat and they're all very very powerful. My hedge cutters alone makes simple work of a a few hundred metres of hawthorn hedges with the ability to cut through 1" branches like going through butter! I bought a grass trimmer but changed out the crappy nylon lines with a 3 bladed brush-cutter head - much much easier to use and doesn't have the same issues as breaking the line every 5 seconds.

Also, you might need an area to burn your garden waste. For years I'd had a place to do this and I'd have bonfires every so often. Now, I've just got an oil barrel incinerator - absolute brilliant for making light work of burning pretty much anything and contains the mess. So don't bother with the wimpy garden incinerators, buy and oil barrel, cut diagonal 6-8" lines round the bottom and it creates a cyclone effect which burns at a hotter temperature - job done!

You could also need some way transporting stuff around the garden. I opted for a powered dumper which carried 250kg loads - but I'm also doing loads of building work so it might be an overkill. I did shift about 6 ton of topsoil the other day to spread out in another part of my garden - would have taken a good 60-ish loads in a normal wheelbarrow.

Another thing you might do with is a chainsaw and a couple of saw horses so that you can log branches. I ended up buying a single sided jaw that you can clamp a branch into it and it sort of cantilevers the branch so you can make a cut wherever you want without having to keep moving the branch or the saw horses.

You'll end up coming up with a load of stuff you'll need when you get to a specific job. I never intended or imagined I'd need as much as I've ended up with but it just grows. I'm currently having to build a new shed just to house all the extra garden tools I've bought - which means you need to buy more tools to do that job as well!

 

[StephenStephen]

A woodburner in the house (Clearview or Woodwarm) to use the leylandii is high on my list!

 

[angelboy]

In another post d000hg talked about burning stuff he had cut down. Rather than that I would recommend a good shredder and composting the stuff. With that much space he could find a corner to make some compost bins out of scrap wood / pallets and just fill them and forget about them. After 6-9 months the contents should have broken down enough so that the contents of bins 1&2 can be merged into bin 3. Even if there is no need for compost now, in a few years it may well come in handy.

The other big benefit of shredder is in making some plants easier to handle once removed. Ivy that has been pulled off is springy and hard to handle. Holly, brambles, anything with thorns are hard to handle for a different reason. Once shredded they are just bits that neatly fit into a tub / sack /whatever.

Just a note on that - I bought one of these Makita Shredders -

- cost about £750 I think and even that was pretty crap. Couldn't handle much over 1" in diameter only the small stuff - so shredders are great if you just stick a bit of privet through but anything else you need to be thinking of one of those huge £2000 petrol chippers.

No, burn it if you can. You get the fire going and just feed it or load it up, go in the house, make a cuppa tea, come back out and reload it. You don't have to be feeding it constantly like a shredder.

Just my opinion on having used both.

 

[StephenStephen]

I'd suggest a large shredder-chipper, but hire it, don't buy it

 

[StephenOak]

Makita Shredders - - cost about £750 I think and even that was pretty crap. Couldn't handle much over 1" in diameter

Well my Bosh shredders both take things up to 40-50mm (depending on the wood) and neither cost anywhere near £750. Even at 1" diameter, that will still be the majority of the volume.

No, burn it if you can. You get the fire going and just feed it or load it up, go in the house, make a cuppa tea, come back out and reload it. You don't have to be feeding it constantly like a shredder.

True, because the shredder will get through the stuff faster than the burner bin.

After chipping shredding you're still left with a load of material to dispose of which then requires more effort to either bag it up or to barrow into beds/compost.

You don't get owt for nowt in this life. If you want mulch / compost you need to put some effort in!

I ended up buying a single sided jaw that you can clamp a branch into it and it sort of cantilevers the branch so you can make a cut wherever you want without having to keep moving the branch or the saw horses.

Do you mean this http://www.tcfengineering.co.uk/log-lifter.html sort of thing? I have one. I have only needed it for one project (dealing with a 30' oak that fell down) but it was extremely useful. I also got a pair of these http://www.tcfengineering.co.uk/logjaw.html at the same time.

The oak was on a slope (25°? 30°?), so the cut pieces tended to want to roll downhill. Those tools enabled me to more easily put and hold them where I wanted them.

 

[angelboy]

Well my Bosh shredders both take things up to 40-50mm (depending on the wood) and neither cost anywhere near £750. Even at 1" diameter, that will still be the majority of the volume.

This was mine.
https://www.sitebox.ltd.uk/makita-gse2200-electric-shredder-240-volt-only-oMAK_GSE2200

Says 50mm but mine struggled with anything much above half that. When I did try and force a larger one in you had to make sure that it wasn't going to snatch the branch out of your hands or kick back.

I sold it and resided to the fact that I'd need something more like this - https://www.chipperfield.co.uk/lawnflite-gts1300l-petrol-shredder.html

True, because the shredder will get through the stuff faster than the burner bin.

I disagree. You can load up the incinerator so it's almost full from side to side and sticking out another 5 foot and when you come back after a 15 minute break it's ash. When I was feeding the shredder that's all I was doing. When I set up the incinerator I can do other jobs as well.

Plus, it still satisfies the urge to get a fire going!

You don't get owt for nowt in this life. If you want mulch / compost you need to put some effort in!

But that's the problem when you have a large garden. You want to crack on and get the job done so that you can enjoy the garden rather than spending every waking minute maintaining it. Turn your back for a second and some other area is overgrown.

Do you mean this http://www.tcfengineering.co.uk/log-lifter.html sort of thing? I have one. I have only needed it for one project (dealing with a 30' oak that fell down) but it was extremely useful. I also got a pair of these http://www.tcfengineering.co.uk/logjaw.html at the same time.

The oak was on a slope (25°? 30°?), so the cut pieces tended to want to roll downhill. Those tools enabled me to more easily put and hold them where I wanted them.

No it's a Still version of this - https://www.alanwadkinstoolstore.co...19975/s21523?gclid=CNmMgfqf29MCFTgW0wody5AKIQ

Dead easy to use and pretty cheap too.

 

[StephenOak]

I have a Bosh spiral shredder (that they don't sell any more) and one of these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bosch-AXT-25-Quiet-Shredder/dp/B001P3NV7A/
and both do 40mm and most of the time 50mm. No snatching of kickback. Of course, if it is a tall branch then you need to be careful of it whipping around.

I disagree. You can load up the incinerator so it's almost full from side to side and sticking out another 5 foot and when you come back after a 15 minute break it's ash.

Not initially though. You need to get it up to temperature before it burns stuff fast.

Plus, it still satisfies the urge to get a fire going!

But that's the problem when you have a large garden. You want to crack on and get the job done so that you can enjoy the garden rather than spending every waking minute maintaining it.

Oh indeed. As I said earlier, a lot depends on how you intend to use the garden. I don't think that filling compost bins takes that long, especially as I can take my prunings and shred that quickly (even if it is quite green when it would be hard to burn) and just dump it in the compost bin. But I do put the time in to filling my compost bins and when they have half rotted down mix a couple together. The end result is that I have loads of compost when I need it. I have, this winter, planted four trees and c. 70 whips and had the compost to give them all a healthy start.

No it's a Still version of this - https://www.alanwadkinstoolstore.co...19975/s21523?gclid=CNmMgfqf29MCFTgW0wody5AKIQ

I see. I would call that a one-ended saw horse or a chainsaw saw horse, but only because I have seen it described that way.