Unwrap with green fingers

What do keen gardeners want for Christmas? Wet weather will soon be the prudent answer as central Europe’s Danube river has sunk to worryingly low levels and much of Britain is still dry after a rain-free autumn. Rain is not in my gift, so I have been checking out the big garden centres, imagining what I would like to find in wrapping paper on the big day.

Hawes watering can

The list has something for everyone. First, a winner for chic gardeners, the sort of people who wear gloves in the garden and deep down hope they will never encounter a worm. The best metal watering cans have always been those made in Britain by Hawes and this year they have jollied up their colours and traditional shapes without losing their high-class watering-rose or manoeuvrability. A Hawes Heritage watering can in pale green ought to delight anyone with an eye for style, not only because it costs £50.

We all lose our secateurs for a while, so none of us can have enough of them. The ones to buy here are the famous Felco brands, priced at £35 upwards according to size and scope. These cutters are the professional choice and only last January I was hearing yet again in a Masterclass on pruning why they are the best brand for the job. Bruised or snagged cuts on a stem or branch are an invitation to ambient bacteria and diseases.

Felco secateurs

We expose our roses and shrubs to needless infections when we cut them with lesser types of secateurs whose blunt bottom blade is less well balanced, giving a clumsy, cheap cut. I do not see the practical point of the new National Trust Mini Pruning Set at £16 with two undersized cutters which might just dead-head a rose on a favourable day. Miniature tools are always to be avoided. A Felco is in a different class and was always the first choice of the late Arthur Hellyer, doyen of best practice in the garden and in so many FT columns. My first pair was bought on his advice and I have remained faithful to the brand ever since. They are a rose bush’s dream.

Even in a small city space, a keen gardener would love a good electric propagator in which to start off seeds, including vegetable seeds. An electric propagator wraps up to make an impressively big present for a reasonable outlay and this year, the options are many. I would go for a Heat & Grow Variable Temperature Propagator from Stewart, the makers of excellent plastic-covered propagating boxes. At £80 their Heat & Grow has a temperature control and ought to give a sure start to all the tempting seeds which will be on the racks next month. If your best beloveds already have a greenhouse with room for beds under the staging, consider a long roll of soil-warming cable instead. Six metres of the Parasene Soil Warming Cable are on special offer in two of my local centres for about £22 and allow the owner to heat a seed bed to a higher temperature than the surrounding greenhouse, delighting the seeds of next year’s geraniums or calceolarias without raising the general temperature of the house to expensive levels. Soil cables are the cheap source of the “bottom heat” which dictionaries on gardening cite without much explanation. Cuttings and seedlings appreciate underground heating as much as I value an electric under-blanket. Basil seeds germinate so easily when warmed from below.

Stewart propagator

Here is an answer for other people’s children up to the age of 12, the modern age of trouble. Give them a special flower bulb set in a glass or pack in which they can watch rapid, foolproof progress and soon have a batch of flowers. This year, there are excellent gift-packs on offer from Taylors Bulbs in Lincolnshire, priced below £10 each. The most spectacular are such fun for very young gardeners, the big bulbs of potted hippeastrums, branded as Amaryllis Lilies. The dramatic multi-headed Red Nymph variety will grow 3ft tall and flower boldly for anyone. It costs £8.99 a unit. Alternatively, try a Crocus Carafe at £5.50 in which crocus corms are set in the necks of water-glasses. Their roots will spread down into the water and be excitingly visible for weeks. Without any skill the crocuses will then flower, even indoors in a child’s bedroom. Grown-ups who are childish at heart would surely like a similar pack of bulbs in one of Taylors’ elegant Outdoor Enamel Buckets. I like the look of a pale green bucket filled with short-stemmed Little Red Riding Hood Tulips for only £8.99. The buckets are weatherproof and decidedly stylish.

Any serious gardener would gladly unwrap a big bucket of essential garden fertiliser instead. Ten kilogrammes of bonemeal in a big plastic bucket is an impressively large present and absolutely seasonal as January is the time to apply it to all borders and intensively planted areas, Arthur Bowers has a big white bucket of exactly that size, one which my local shops have cut to a promotional £10. It is a winner, especially if paired with a 2kg plastic pack of Miracle-Gro Slow Release at £12.99 for subsequent summer use. This brand is the equivalent of the celebrated Osmocote which nurserymen use to push along the plants they sell to you at premature “maturity”.

Burgon & Ball Planting Line

I leave you to decide if a pack of Flexiballs, 10 for £8.99, is a more apt present for a spouse or office boss. The balls are actually rather useful as they are connectors for the frames of outdoor fruit cages, allowing more cross beams to be fixed into place to support the netting and so forth. Novice vegetable gardeners would probably prefer their very own garden line, the sort of line for straight digging, planting out and edging which old gardeners used to make from string wound round two thick wooden pegs. If the pegs are not to hand Burgon & Ball are offering a modern version, the Planting Line with green string and two shaped pegs for £16.99.

Naturally a serious gardener would like to unwrap a new plant. If you are not shy of giving twigs, there is great value just now in many magnolias which are selling as three-year-old plants for only £19.99 each. Any Magnolia x soulangeana is welcome but the white soulangeana Alba Superba is outstandingly lovely and will also grace a big south or west wall. Lower down, any scented viburnum is always welcome even if the leaves look wretched just now. For a prettier impact when unwrapped, try the vivid orange-red Cornus sanguinea Midwinter Fire, an eye-catching mass of winter stems even on Christmas Day. Owners should be told to cut it down yearly close to ground level in late spring and feed it then to ensure brilliant young new stems for the next winter. If you want an evergreen, look for the newish Photinia fraseri Pink Marble. There are excellent young potted plants of this one in the shops for around £15 and its pleasing mixture of pale cream and green leaves, tinged with pink when young, is not yet well known to keen gardeners.

Lastly, some winners for a mild London site. Sasanqua camellias are varieties which flower outdoors even in November and in this year’s mild month they have been enviable. Of course they need acid lime-free soil and the shelter of a friendly, lightly shaded wall but once again they are showing how good they can be. Last year they were ruined by snowdrifts but at £20 a flowering plant of Camellia sasanqua Plantation Pink is a single flowered beauty. Even if the recipient kills it in due course it will have given weeks of pleasure as a flowering present in its first year.