Let's be honest, winter isn’t always the most pleasant time for gardening, but tasks do need to be done and having the right tools makes them more enjoyable and efficient. You can prevent struggling with freezing hands and ineffective implements by filling your shed with these hard-wearing winter garden tools that prove vital throughout the season.
I worked outdoors year-round as a professional gardener for a decade, and you can still find me in my home garden or on my allotment through winter, provided the weather isn’t too bitter and freezing (I do have my limitations). Over my years as a horticulturist, I have discovered a selection of winter garden tools that have proved vital season after season for me.
Building a solid collection of hard-working winter garden tools means you have everything you need to dig, prune, mulch, clear, and tidy your yard throughout the colder months, plus they are great over the rest of the gardening year. These essential gardening tools can help you work smarter and reduce fatigue, while protecting you from the worst of the winter elements.
Essential Winter Garden Tools
It can be a challenging time in the yard, but hard-wearing tools will make things a lot easier and certainly more pleasant.
These are my recommended pieces of kit for a winter garden. They are tools I have regularly used over the colder seasons to keep both the gardens I worked in and my home plots tidy and healthy.
Winter gardening can often be cold and wet. It is no fun doing any tasks with freezing fingers or soaked hands. But a good set of heavy-duty, waterproof gardening gloves can make even working in undesirable conditions bearable. They will shield your hands from the cold temperatures, especially with a fleece or thermal lining, making digging or pruning easier and more enjoyable. Waterproof leather gloves also keep your hands dry and prevent you from getting stabbed by sharp branches or thorns. Something as simple as having the right types of gardening gloves for winter will make a big difference when you are out in the yard getting essential jobs done.
A solid spade will be a much-used winter garden tool, as well as proving vital year-round in the yard. Over the winter period, in particular, it can be used to plant shrubs, plant bare-root trees, lift and divide plants, edge lawns, and shape flower beds if you are doing a bit of garden redesign. It can potentially mean digging planting holes in wet ground, and moving, or turning, large amounts of soil. A hard-wearing spade can be made from solid wood or fiberglass, and features a steel blade to cut through soil or plant roots effortlessly. One with a D-handle is recommended to help provide a strong grip and comfort throughout heavy usage.
A heavy-duty garden fork can have several uses during the winter. For example, it can be brought out of the tool shed to turn over soil. It will help aerate the ground, reduce compaction, and break up large clods for perfect planting conditions for spring. The fork is also perfect for turning compost in the colder months, which is not a glamorous task but essential to speed up the process. When the soil is workable, a fork also removes large perennial weeds from beds and borders. A hard-wearing garden fork features a wooden or metal handle and either carbon or stainless steel tines. Carbon steel is strong but needs maintenance to prevent rust, while stainless steel is resistant to rust, so pick depending on your preference.
Winter is a great time for mulching, and a shovel is a must-have tool for mulching flower beds or mulching a vegetable garden. It is a workhorse tool that is perfect for scooping and spreading compost, leaf mold, soil, or well-rotted manure onto your beds and borders. Aside from moving organic matter or filling raised garden beds with soil, a shovel is also the go-to for spreading gravel around the yard, such as topping up garden paths. A heavy-duty shovel can have different heads, either round for digging or square for scooping, so pick the right one for your task. I use a shovel more for lifting and moving, not digging. A good, hard-wearing shovel should feel weighty, but not heavy, and have a D-handle grip.
There are potentially more different types of garden rakes than you know. Come winter, there can be many jobs that require a rake, from clearing leaves and debris to raking soil and levelling out mulch. A bow rake, also known as a soil rake, is a heavy-duty type of rake with short, thick metal tines. It is ideal for winter tasks like spreading and smoothing soil or mulch, breaking up clods of earth, and clearing debris from around the yard. It is a harder-wearing winter tool than a leaf rake with flexible tines. Another good option for a winter rake is a landscape rake, which has a wide head and sturdy metal tines suitable for levelling soil.
A strong pair of pruning shears is an essential pruning tool for winter, when there is a lot of pruning to be done. Winter is an ideal time to prune deciduous shrubs and trees and cut back old perennials ahead of the new season. Pruning plants in December and January, provided it is not frozen, keeps them healthy and encourages strong growth come spring. Any pruning is made easier and more efficient with a sharp and strong pair of shears. Bypass pruning shears have two curved steel blades that slide past each other, making clean cuts that plants can easily heal. I have used a pair of Felco F2 pruning shears for many years for winter pruning. They are strong, sharp, and all parts are replaceable.
Pruning shears are suitable for trimming stems up to half an inch thick; for anything thicker, you must upgrade to more advanced pruning tools. Loppers are especially effective for pruning fruit trees in winter, as well as other trees and large shrubs. Standard loppers can cut branches 1-1.5 inches thick, while ratchet loppers, which cut in stages and multiply your force, can handle branches up to two inches. I have always found them especially useful for pruning larger stems, as they offer extra leverage while reducing strain when trimming. They offer a useful alternative to a pruning saw for branches just too thick for traditional loppers, saving you time and effort. You can also get ones with extendable handles so you can reach up in the tree canopy.
There can be many different heavy loads to shift around the yard during winter, including soil, mulch, debris, bark chippings, or even snow that may need moving. A strong, sturdy wheelbarrow will get a lot of use over winter and makes moving material much more efficient and reduces any risk of strain that can come from lugging heavy bags or sacks. Wheelbarrows are available in single or double-wheeled types and are commonly made from plastic or steel. A two-wheeled type will be more stable as it distributes the weight more evenly, while traditional wheelbarrows with one wheel are easier to manoeuvre. Make sure to pick a barrow suited to your needs by considering the material, the number of wheels, and whether you prefer air-filled or solid wheels.
You can create lots of debris over winter, particularly from all your seasonal pruning. A shredder or chipper is a great way to turn all those trimmings into valuable material. Stems and branches from trees and shrubs can be transformed into chippings, which you can use as a natural type of mulch. Alternatively, the chippings can be used to make compost, where they will break down quickly to improve soil health when used around the garden. If you traditionally create lots of waste and struggle to know what to do with it, it is more efficient to turn it into beneficial material than fill countless bags to leave out for curbside collection or take to local services for them to turn into compost.
Winter gardening has many facets, but protecting plants forms a key part, and understanding how to overwinter a garden shields all your precious plants from cold. There are different ways to protect plants from frost, depending on your climate and how tender they are.
It includes wrapping plants outdoors, bringing tender plants indoors for winter, and mulching to insulate the roots of outdoor plants against freezing temperatures. Keeping a close eye on temperatures and putting all measures in place to keep plants adequately protected is crucially important as part of any winter gardening checklist.
