Moving a 15-gallon can of Rosa Rouletii is easier with the help of a dolly.
By Carolyn Parker
On a recent Saturday morning, a woman from up the street marveled at how easily I managed to move a 15-gallon potted rosebush 20 feet to its planting hole.How did I do it? With a dolly, or what some call a hand truck. I use ours constantly.
Stacks of bricks, big stones and bags of potting soil move with ease perched on a dolly. On garden design jobs, I always suggest that my clients invest in one. My husband bought ours years ago at Home Depot. With a dolly, I feel like Superwoman when I'm moving heavy objects around the garden.
Favoritism rules when I think of my garden tools. My least favorite is the ubiquitous garden hose; my most favorite tool varies by the job.
A pickax is a must-have if you're digging holes. Of course shovels are great, but a sturdy pickax will slice through packed earth and deepen your planting hole faster than a shovel. I use ours in tandem with a shovel.
The blade side of a pickax will also peel up sod with ease if you have a mind to widen your rose beds.
One tool that I especially liked was swallowed up by the soil it had just loosened. It was a small hand scythe that I purchased for 40 rupees in India. Simple but perfect — and hand-wrought — it was a wonder tool. Weeds came up with no fuss, small planting holes appeared with a few strokes, and soil crumbled under its swipe.
I lost it while gardening one cold winter day. I looked and looked for it,but it was hopelessly buried. While planting a rosebush last spring, it reappeared, corroded and unusable. I kept it, though. Maybe I'll ask a metal worker to try to reproduce it.
Some years ago, I perused a wall of hoes and rakes at a garden center. Among the many styles, I chose a four-pronged claw attached to a long handle. The tool became surprisingly indispensable. It's great for working in fertilizer, finessing mulch or soil into the right place, and for crushing dirt clods. The tool feels graceful in my hands, as if I were an artist wielding a paintbrush.
On impulse recently, I stopped in at Smith & Hawken in Walnut Creek and came away with two fabulous purchases — a non-kinking hose and a collapsible kneeler seat. My knees have bothered me recently and this handy product really saved them the other day. I cut back fleabane along both sides of a 17-foot-long brick path while sitting on the sturdy foam seat. If I flip it over, the seat becomes a comfortable knee rest for weeding and small planting jobs.
As for the hose, the salesman said I could bring it back if it didn't live up to its non-kinkability. So far it has; however, it's a bit heavier than most hoses. I don't think the new hose will be a favorite anytime soon, but I'm happy with no kinks.
Planting sweet peas
In the apricot section, there's a sage-colored wood tuteur that would look good with a sweet pea called Orange Streamer. I saw this treatment of tuteurs in the rose bed, in England, and think it will be fun to try. Another idea is to plant a few sweet peas at the base of climbing roses that are on a fence, arbor, or trellis.
I always soak sweet pea seeds overnight so they'll germinate faster. They are the most foolproof seeds I know, and frost doesn't hurt them. Snails like them, though, and birds might go for new shoots. http://www.rosesfromatoz.com/rose-tools.html
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