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Friday 9 January 2009

Glorious gadgets

Is Christmas creeping up on you, unawares? Again? Have you found yourself, even at this late hour, facing a nil-all draw as far as presents bought, and presents asked for, is concerned? Never mind.

Is Christmas creeping up on you, unawares? Again? Have you found yourself, even at this late hour, facing a nil-all draw as far as presents bought, and presents asked for, is concerned? Never mind. When, finally, you can no longer ignore what is happening all around you, at least you can be comforted by the knowledge that your gardening friends and relations are easy to buy for. Little twiddly gardening gadgets are the very stuff of mail-order catalogues, and thus available without you leaving your hearthside to sit in a traffic jam. If a paving stone weeder doesn’t quite fit the bill (although, trust me, they are very useful) you could consider a garden vacuum. I know fashion bullies think they are really naff, but take no notice, for they are brilliant. A 3000 watt Black and Decker or Flymo machine (somewhere between £50 and £60, depending on where you buy it) will suck up plant detritus and leaves, and cut them into little bits, small enough to put in the compost bin. If you cannot be fished to decant this mulch, the machine is also capable of blowing leaves into a corner or under a hedge, where they can simply be forgotten about.

However, none of this solves the problem of something big and expensive for your nearest and dearest. This is trickier. It is very easy to spend £50, but a little harder to spend £200. Harder but, I assure you, not impossible, for that kind of money should allow you to acquire the most useful garden tools to have come on the market in recent years: the digital camera and the iPod player. A digital camera gives you the capacity to capture masses of images, every day of the year if you like, enabling you to build up a complex and truthful picture of how your garden looks at every season. It has become a vital piece of kit for anyone who is as interested in the look of the garden as the nurture of the individual plants in it. It has a price scarcely below rubies but an excellent ‘prosumer’ SLR, such as the Canon EOS 1000D or Nikon D60, may be purchased on the internet for £300 or thereabouts. These cameras take sufficiently good pictures for you to consider inviting your neighbours round for a PowerPoint presentation. (Just an idea.) However, if all that is required is a substitute notebook, £50 may be all you need to pay.

More articles from: Ursula Buchan | this section

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