12 Products Lawn and Garden Experts Swear By

Sean and Allison McManus know the value of a reliable wheelbarrow with a deep tub. The founders of Spoken Garden, a gardening podcast, employ one for hauling volumes of soil, pavers, and other material around a garden, but its usefulness doesn’t stop there. Wheelbarrows are also great for mixing soil, potting and planting containers directly from it, and so much more, the couple says.

Angela Judd, a gardener and the author of “How to Grow Your Own Food: An Illustrated Beginner’s Guide to Container Gardening” (Adams Media, 2021), swears by an olla, which is a terra cotta vessel that’s buried underground and filled with water, and she won’t garden in containers without one. “The water seeps out gradually as needed by the plant’s roots,” Judd says. “Ollas help my container plants not only survive the hot summers of Arizona but also thrive.”

Hope also purchased this splitting axe by Fiskars to handle firewood from the tree that fell in his backyard. “I didn’t know this, but I learned that a splitting axe is specially designed to do exactly that—split,” Hope says. “It let me take all those giant logs and split them into fire pit-sized pieces, which we burned all summer.”

Once you have your summer garden up and running, the last thing you need is to worry about pests. NYC Plant Doctor Christopher Satch, who’s a professor of plant biology and pathology at The New York Botanical Garden, always starts with insecticidal soap when faced with unwelcome visitors. “It’s superior to neem [oil] in that it not only has a greater efficacy at killing insects due to its mode of action but also doesn’t hurt the plant like neem oil can,” Satch says. “Neem oil suffocates the plant over time by the oil clogging the plant pores.”

Satch recommends this insecticidal soap from Bonide, which can be used on shrubs, trees, flowers, ornamental greens, and garden vegetables. 

“Whether I am working on the flower farm or planting garden boxes on my porch, I always have my Hori Hori garden knife by my side,” says Niki Irving, a farmer and florist at Flourish Flower Farm. The pro finds the blade useful for weeding, digging holes, and removing stubborn roots, as well as planting. 

The McManuses also consider Hori Hori knives a staple for the garden, and their go-to is a version from Corona Tools ($19.98 at Lowe’s). “With graduated depth markings—some don’t come with them—this tool is always with us any time of year to not only weed but also to measure planting depth for plants and bulbs, transplanting, breaking up circling roots, digging, breaking up or refreshing soil for new plantings, opening soil or fertilizer bags, opening boxes, and a lot more.”

“Every gardener should have a bypass hand pruner,” says Melinda Myers, who has more than 30 years of horticulture experience and has written more than 20 books on gardening. The tool is prime for deadheading (removing dead or wilted flower heads to encourage new growth), cutting back plants, and pruning shrubs. A bypass pruner has two sharp blades that provide a quick and clean cut, which helps seal the plant and, in turn, reduces the risk of insects and diseases moving into it. 

Myers prefers to use the FlexDial ComfortGel Bypass pruner because the handle opening can be customized by hand size. “This means you will waste less energy extending beyond a comfortable reach to grab the handles and make a cut,” she says. “You’ll be able to work longer with less muscle fatigue.”

Whether you’re clearing debris or trying to avoid the jabs and stabs of thorny bushes, a sturdy pair of gardening gloves can provide protection from Mother Nature’s, well, natural defenses. Take it from someone who wrangles stems and branches professionally:

“I don’t love wearing gloves when I make flowers, as it feels too clunky,” says Matilda Noble, a floral designer and founder of Noble Diaz, an event production company in New York. “But these are great when doing bigger branch installations because they are thick enough to avoid spike stabs but thin enough to do intricate work, plus you can still use your phone.”

A standing weeder—which prevents gardeners from having to kneel—is the product of choice for Tobie Stanger, a former CR editor who previously reported on, among other topics, the best lawn mowers and how to get them ready for the season. “This gizmo digs deeper and more surgically than I can,” she says. “That makes it especially useful in extracting deep-rooted weeds like dandelions from my lawn.”

A tool that Lorin Nielsen always finds herself reaching for is the Power Planter DIY Guru Auger, a drill bit tool. The head horticulturist at Epic Gardening—an online destination that offers advice and techniques for cultivating a garden—employs this 3-inch-wide auger bit for a hand drill and uses it to bore into hard-packed soil to easily plant dahlia bulbs or loosen the soil before transplanting in veggies. “I also find myself reaching for it to help blend amendments or mix together batches of potting mix in my garden cart,” Nielsen says.

“One of the biggest problems with gas-powered equipment—like lawn mowers and string trimmers—is having issues starting the device after a period of nonuse,” says John Galeotafiore, a home improvement testing team leader at CR. “This can be caused by gasoline that’s sat for too long in the device and has gone bad.”

“You never know when it’s going to be the last time you use that equipment for the season, so it’s important to always use a fuel stabilizer,” says Galeotafiore, who has had excellent results using the solution, which provides the gasoline with a protective layer to prevent evaporation and spoilage.