What Should You Gift a Gardener? 10 Ideas for 2023
Gardeners are notoriously picky about their instruments of trade. Not only do they toil at the land, but they also create works of art in their hedgerows and flowerbeds. A gardener's purpose is to bring about and sustain life by getting to know what their plants need. It follows suit that the gardener's tools fit their purposes, to help them create, maintain and adjust their gardens as they see fit.
Only after our first winter at the Northern Willow household, we started to get a grip on our garden, lay our first ground cover, and planted our first seeds. We intended to be as self-sustaining as possible. With this new self-sustaining lifestyle, we gradually started to understand our tools to best match our little cove of the Yorkshire landscape.
But what tools did we find most useful, and what did we find on our first adventure into the world of horticulture?
Here's a list of our favourite gift ideas for any gardener of any skill set, age or experience. We found them to completely change our indoor and outdoor plants, and we think you’d love them too. These include;
Read on to discover 10 really useful gift ideas for the gardeners in your life…
Jump to…
What Is A Good Gift For A Gardener?
What To Put in a Gardening Gift Basket?
Gardening Gift Ideas With Northern Willow.
What Is A Good Gift For A Gardener?
Many gardeners want to spend more time improving their garden to enjoy with the grandkids or loved ones whenever they can. Introducing wildlife, new creepy crawlies and wildflowers into their garden to help diversify their outdoor space. Our parents love gardening and we are constantly celebrating with them in their garden, so we thought we’d pass on a few of their favourites on to you.
Since then, we have been on a back-and-forth, gifting little items that are local to us, to bring about every wonder of the modern British countryside into each others’ gardens.
Bee Gift Set for Gardeners | Hexagon Bee House
By Wuddle - £30.95
This lovely beginners pack is perfect for anyone wanting to encourage bees to frequent their garden, pollinate their flowers and live healthily for future generations.
This gift pack includes:
- One Handmade Wooden Bee Hexagonal Hotel.
- A Seed Ball Tin Filled With Native Wildflower Seeds.
- Fixings To Attach To A Tree.
- Gift Wrap As Standard.
Adding little nooks to your garden is a great way to add wandering bees into your ecosystem. We added 2 Wuddls near our wildflowers to help them pollinate and further populate our flower beds.
Bramley Gardener's Greenhouse Beauty Set
By John Lewis - £39
This comely little gift set from John Lewis is great as a treat for any gardener who has earned a well-deserved soak after a day in the garden. With this set you get from Bramley:
- Hand Wash 100ml.
- Hand Cream 100ml.
- Bubble Bath 100ml.
- Body Wash 100ml.
- Body Lotion 100ml.
- A Pack Of Wildflower Seeds.
Wild Flowers are a wonderful addition to any garden as bees love them. We’ve listed this product as we got ours from John Lewis, but you can also see more of the Bramley range through their website Bramley Products.
Barbeque Tool Basket Set
By Northern Willow - £59
What garden is complete without a barbecue? We couldn’t think of a better way of celebrating the 4 annual days of the UK sun without getting family and friends around to burn a few sausages!
Keeping your utensils in one place is key to efficiency when BBQing because there's nothing worse than missing the sunny periods trying to remember where you put those metal tongues back in 2017.
This set comes complete with:
- A Stainless Steel Fork.
- A Stainless Steel Set Of Tongs.
- A Basting Brush.
- A Stainless Steel Spatula.
- A Full Antique-Wash Willow And Faux Tan Leather Straps.
Mr Muck Organic Compost
By Mr Muck - £19.95
Mr Muck is a garden supplies business whose expertise in muck ranges over 3 generations. Originally based in Doncaster, this company provides top-quality manure, compost and soil improvers to your door.
As our parents aged, we wanted to make sure that they would have everything they wanted to help them enjoy their gardens without too much heavy lifting. This is where Mr Muck stepped in. They claim to deliver to every part of mainland Britain and can supply up to 2000 bags! Not bad, eh?
Grow Your Own Mushrooms Kit
By Fungi Futures - £22.95
Growing your own mushrooms is so 2023. This little kit will provide the spores to grow pearl oyster mushrooms at home in a bed of used coffee grounds. Ours took a little shorter than the 14 days recommended on the box, which was handy. Of course, these mushrooms are totally edible, so have a recipe prepared. Our recipe was a riff on Kenji Lopez Alt's Simple Mushroom Soup, which we’ve linked below. Fungi really are the future!
A Trug From Northern Willow
By Northern Willow - £16 - £42
Trugs are what got us interested in wicker’s use in gardens originally. Perfectly handy, lightweight and durable, they are just such a cool way to collect homegrown vegetables and fruit. The people in your life, whatever their involvement in gardening, will surely love a trug in their routine. We not only love a trug for moving and storing garden items, but they also make for a great centrepiece for displays. You can even use them to make top-notch gift-wrapped hampers too!
Check out our dedicated piece on gift-wrapped hampers here!
For many more styles of trug, have a nosey through our dedicated trug page. They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, materials and washes.
Grow Your Own Prosecco-Style Wine Kit
By The Gluttonous Gardener - £38
After a long weekend in Barcelona in 2016, we swore off Prosecco for life. We were now Cava drinkers, and everything had to be served Tapas Style from little terracotta ramekins. Our neighbours, after we carefully explained our new love for everything Catalan, got us this for our greenhouse as a bit of a joke.
A few seasons of growth later and we had a perfectly quaffable, effervescent wine! We now have a few good anecdotes and the vine is still standing to this day!
If you're wanting to gift this bottle or any bottle of wine for that matter, check out our piece on Gifting Wine for some top tips!
Shout-out to The Gluttonous Gardener, their gift range is packaged perfectly and they were accommodating when we ordered the Red Wine Vine for our wine connoisseur colleague of ours!
Oak Effect Planter with Heart Cut-Out
By Northern Willow - £16
Our lovely little planter is made from an oak-effect, solid wooden base. Suitable for indoor or outdoor use, this planer is great for adding a touch of love to your plants, whilst offering a practical solution at the same time.
We have a few planters available throughout our range, such as this antique-washed version, which is slightly smaller than the one listed above.
Either sitting on a table inside, attached to a wall or finding itself useful in a greenhouse, we think you’ll love these planters as they are beautifully made and will last a lifetime.
Biscuit The Hedgehog Brushwood House with Food Bowls
By Garden Selections - £26.99
We’ve found this little house for hedgehogs sturdy, decent in size and in-fitting with our current garden ware in general. Not only is this cosy little house perfect for a quick stop-off point for our spikey chums, but it also offers them a place to hibernate, too!
This piece comes with 2 ceramic food bowls, making this an even more inviting little spot for hedgehogs and other small critters to hunker down in.
With us owning cats, we haven’t used this burrow in our current home, however former neighbour and friend George Smallwood, winner of the UK’s Shed of The Year 2018 got great usage out of his, 7 years after purchase.
Antique Wash Deluxe Garden Tool Basket
By Northern Willow - £40 - £79
These expertly crafted sets of useful garden tools are available in sizes Small, Large or as a pair of both.
Included are:
- A Garden Trowel.
- A Trident.
- 25 Metres Of Jute Twine.
- A Garden Dibber.
- A Set Of Wooden Markers.
The dimensions for each are:
- Small: 270mm x 140mm x 100/280mm, (340mm with handle)
- Large: 360mm x 230mm x 110/350mm, (430mm with handle)
Ideal for a set of 2 gardeners, these baskets are perfect for easy gifting for a horticulturist of any level.
What To Put in a Gardening Gift Basket
If you are putting together a gift basket for a loved one, look no further than Northern Willow. We’ve put together a few gift baskets in our time, it's a big part of running a wicker company!
With gift baskets, it's better to choose smaller, more personal items to pop into a basket, rather than anything too substantial. We find it best to add auxiliary presents for a hobby (think golf balls and golf tees, or alcohol paired with liqueurs) to a gift basket, as these are an affordable way to give something impactful and memorable.
For someone who loves gardening, wicker hampers, trugs and shoppers are a great way to package many smaller items into a rustic and genuine more significant gift.
We think that some smaller gifts to include for a gardener might include:
- Local wildflower seeds.
- Vegetable seeds, making sure to pick the right month to sow.
- Gardening jute to help keep things in line.
- Wooden dobbers for planting things at the right depth.
- Tools such as a gardening fork or trowel.
- Wooden garden markers for identifying what has been planted.
Check out our dedicated blog on How To Make A Gift Basket for Northern Willow’s gardening gift packaging tips.
Gardening Gift Ideas With Northern Willow
At Northern Willow, we are keen on making sure our gardening exploits are fully sustainable. We avoid plastics where we can, which wicker, wood, seagrass or rattan are great for as they are fully natural materials and therefore don’t contribute to microplastics reaching the water table.
Our all-natural approach is perfect for every generation and leads to a beautiful, organic garden. If you want more tips on keeping your garden sustainable now and for years to come, we created a detailed blog post on How To Build A Sustainable Garden in 2022.
Make sure to check back with us here every few weeks to see how your use of wicker and a sustainable approach to gardening can improve not only your lifestyle but the gifts you give, too.
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