The best gardening and landscaping tools

• Having the essential gardening tools ready in your shed or garage makes the work even more of a joy instead of a chore.
• We’ve gathered up a collection of the best tools for a variety of gardening needs. Whether you need a hose, rake, shears, or a shovel, we’ve got you covered.
• If you’re a gardening novice looking to fill out your toolkit with affordable gear, check out our roundup of the best gardening tools for beginners.

If you are like most people, your garden might be your most frequent encounter with nature. Perhaps that’s why gardening calls to the spirit of so many people, and time spent working in the yard feels like enjoyment instead of labor.

For those who love to garden, a little dirt under the fingernails is a small price to pay for the meditative joy of working the soil, smelling the rich earth, planting seeds or young sprouts, and watching the miraculous growth into a beautiful flowering plant or a harvest of vegetables.

Gardening is one of the most popular hobbies in the United States, and it’s easy to understand why. You don’t have to have an enormous plot of land. Your garden can be as small as a few pots on a balcony. You can invest thousands of dollars into your garden, or just pay a dollar for a packet of seeds.

The majority of gardeners, however, fall somewhere in the middle range. And for those gardeners, having a good collection of gardening tools makes it easier and more enjoyable to spend time working the land.

We’ve researched, tested, and reviewed tons of gardening gear over the years resulting in buying guides to everything from the best gardening gloves to the best electric lawn mowers. But if you’re looking for a one-stop guide to the best gardening tools you can buy, look no further. If you want to read more about any of our top picks, we link to each specific buying guide where applicable.

Here are the best gardening tools:

• Best gloves: Showa Atlas Nitrile Gloves
• Best shovel: Fiskars Long-Handle Round-Point Steel Digging Shovel
• Best garden hose: Craftsman Premium Rubber Garden Hose
• Best garden hose nozzle: Gardenite Heavy-Duty Watering Nozzle
• Best watering can: Bloem Easy Pour Watering Can
• Best pruning shears: Fiskars Steel Bypass Pruning Shears
• Best garden sprinkler: Gardena 1951 Spike Sprinkler
• Best rake: Fiskars Leaf Rake
• Best string trimmer: DeWalt 20V Max Lithium Ion XR String Trimmer
• Best electric lawn mower: EGO Power+ 20-Inch Cordless Lawn Mower

Prices and links are current as of 5/27/20. We restructured this guide to feature several of our favorite gardening and landscaping tools, many of which are the top picks in larger buying guides.

The best gloves

The Showa Atlas Nitrile Gloves keep your hands clean and dry but won’t get in the way or impede your dexterity while handing delicate seedlings.

These gardening gloves from Showa are made of a durable nylon fabric and coated with a layer of nitrile rubber – the same material used to make medical gloves. They’ll keep your hand clean and dry, but they’re form-fitting enough to ensure that you maintain your dexterity when handing seedlings or delicate blooms.

We like these gloves so much that we selected them as our best overall pick in our guide to the best gardening gloves. Insider Reviews deputy editor Malarie Gokey writes, “The best gardening gloves make it feel like you’re not wearing anything on your hands at all. The Showa Atlas Nitrile Gloves protect you from dirt and other debris with their durable nylon fabric and nitrile coating without adding unnecessary bulk or impeding your gardening.”

The one downside to these gloves is that they’re relatively thin, meaning they won’t protect you from thorns or brambles. If you’re looking for something a bit more heavy-duty, click over to our full buying guide and take a look at some of our other picks.

Pros: Flexible, lightweight, machine washable

Cons: Not thick enough to handle thorny plants

Read our full buying guide to the best gardening gloves.

The best shovel

The Fiskars Long-Handle Round-Point Steel Digging Shovel is a durable shovel that will handle dense dirt, rocks, and root systems with ease.

Though probably the least fun part of landscaping, digging holes is as about as essential a task as they come when planting a garden. And unless you really want to get your hands dirty, you’ll need a good shovel. For large tasks like planting shrubs or moving rose bushes, you’ll want a sturdy steel shovel with a sharp rounded blade.

The Fiskars Long-Handle Round-Point Steel Digging Shovel is our top pick in our larger buying guide to the best shovels. Insider Reviews writer Michelle Ullman writes, “This beauty of a tool has a 14-gauge steel blade and an 18-gauge steel handle welded together so the shovel won’t snap even under rugged use. It has a large foot platform so you can really throw your weight into your digging, and a rubbery orange grip to keep your gloved hands in place without slipping or sliding.”

Of course, this is a shovel best used for planting larger shrubs and bushes. If you’re looking for a trowel or a spade more suited to planting flowers or seeds, check out our buying guide for further recommendations.

Pros: Steel construction, welded handle and blade

Cons: Too large for detail work

Read our full buying guide to the best gardening shovels.

The best garden hose

With a lifetime guarantee and durable, thick rubber construction, the Craftsman Premium Rubber Garden Hose is a great buy at a reasonable price.

Our top pick in our guide to the best garden hoses, the Craftsman Premium Rubber Garden Hose is a great example of solid craftsmanship. It’s a simply constructed rubber garden hose that won’t kink easily, won’t crack or warp in the sun, and is backed by a lifetime guarantee.

Insider Reviews writer Steven John writes, “If I weren’t already calling the Craftsman Premium Rubber Garden Hose a superlative product based on its quality, I’d call it a great buy simply due to its price. This rugged, capable hose could easily sell for double its price tag thanks to its durability.”

It’s rated to withstand temperatures from 25 degrees below zero all the way up to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, so if you’re in the habit of leaving your hose outside in all weather, the Craftsman won’t spring a leak the next time you uncoil it.

Pros: Durable, can withstand extreme temperatures, lifetime guarantee from Craftsman

Cons: Stiff, difficult to coil, can scuff surfaces

Read our guide to the best garden hoses.

The best garden hose nozzle

With 10 spray settings and an independent pressure knob, the Gardenite Heavy-Duty Watering Nozzle is just about as customizable as they come.

The Gardenite Heavy-Duty Watering Nozzle is our top pick in our guide to the best hose nozzles thanks to its impressive versatility. It can easily transition from a hard, direct spray suitable for hosing down garbage cans to a soft, gentle mist to water your seedlings and flowers.

Insider Reviews writer Alex Rennie writes in his review, “In addition to the 10 different spray options available, a separate pressure knob allows you to also adjust the intensity of any of those options. With this freedom to customize every aspect of your spray and its operating system, nothing is stopping you from adapting the Gardenite Heavy-Duty Watering Nozzle to any specific task.”

The nozzle is made of metal, so it’s resistant to cracks, even if you drop it on the pavement. That does make it a bit heavier than other models, so if you’re watering a large swath of your garden, you might experience a bit more fatigue than with other nozzles.

Pros: Incredibly versatile, easy to squeeze, metal construction

Cons: May be too complicated for some, adds weight to your hose

Read our full buying guide to the best garden hose nozzles.

The best watering can

With its ability to switch from a gentle rain shower to a full stream, the Bloem Easy Pour Watering Can is one of the most versatile out there.

For smaller gardens, window boxes, and even houseplants, a watering can might be the best way to supply your plants with the water they crave. But some plants require a gentle sprinkle so as not to crush leaves or delicate blooms. Other, hardier plants may need a larger volume of water more easily delivered in a steady stream. The Bloem Easy Pour Watering Can has a rotating head that allows you to deliver the proper stream to your plants.

It’s a large watering can with a 2.6-gallon capacity, and anyone who’s hauled water across their lawn to their plants can attest to how heavy water gets. These larger cans can be tough to pour, putting strain on your arms and wrists. Bloem has taken that into consideration as well. Its double grip allows you to place your hand however you’ll get the most leverage. You can also grip with two hands for additional support.

The Bloem Easy Pour Watering Can is constructed from UV-stabilized resin plastic so it will resist fading, warping, cracking, and freezing. The material is also FDA-approved for contact with food, so you won’t have to worry about dangerous chemicals leaching into the water you give to your vegetable patch.

Pros: Large capacity, two stream types, constructed from FDA-approved resin plastic, dual handle grip

Cons: May be too heavy for some gardeners when full

The best pruning shears

Fiskars Steel Bypass Pruning Shears sport precision-ground steel blades lubricated with a non-stick coating to prevent sap and debris from locking them up.

If you’ve ever left your pruning shears in your garage only for them to be completely locked up the next time you go to prune your roses, they were likely a victim of sap gluing the blades together. Fiskars has aimed to put a stop to gummed up pruning shears by treating its blades with a non-stick coating. The coating not only prevents sap buildup, but it also allows the blades to cut through wood that much more easily.

The steel blades are also of the bypass variety, meaning that the top blade descends below the hinge, making for a cleaner cut, so you don’t have to saw through the branch you’re trying to remove. The Fiskars Pruning Shears can handle branches up to 5/8 of an inch (a bit smaller than a dime), so they will easily be able to handle your rose bushes and forsythias that need their seasonal trims.

The blades lock closed with a sliding button that can easily be accessed with your thumb, so you don’t have to fumble with a latch mechanism. Fiskars also stands by its product with a lifetime warranty.

Pros: Steel blades, easy locking mechanism, large cutting capacity, non-stick blades, lifetime warranty

Cons: Blades can still gum up over time

The best garden sprinkler

The Gardena 1951 Spike Sprinkler delivers a gentle mist over a 10-yard area to ensure your plants don’t get beaten down by hard water.

Longtime gardener and Insider Reviews writer Mary Marlowe Levrette chose the Gardena 1951 Spike Sprinkler as the best sprinkler for flowers and vegetables in our guide to the best sprinklers. She writes, “The easy-to-move and connect spike delivers water in a fine mist that soaks into the soil slowly and doesn’t beat down fragile seedlings. The mist is delivered in a circular pattern that can reach a diameter of up to 10 yards. However, by just reducing the water pressure, the diameter can be adjusted to cover much smaller areas.”

Simply press the spike into the soil at the center point of the area you’d like to water and turn on your hose. Though the Gardena does have a decent area of coverage, if you’re looking to water your whole lawn, you’ll need something a bit more powerful. Check out our other suggestions in our full guide linked below.

Pros: Easy to connect and move, anchors into soil for stability, delivers a gentle mist that won’t harm plants

Cons: Not powerful enough for a whole lawn, hose connector is plastic and can crack

Read our full buying guide to the best sprinklers.

The best rake

With its extra-wide 24-inch head, the Fiskars Leaf Rake makes quick work of cleaning up fall leaves, tilling soil, or spreading mulch.

For many, a rake is simply a seasonal tool to clean up fallen leaves from the yard, but gardeners know it for the multipurpose tool it truly is. Whether you’re aerating soil, spreading mulch, or, yes, using it for its most common purpose, you’ll need a strong rake with a wide head to make quick work of your beds or lawn.

The Fiskars Leaf Rake delivers with its two-foot-wide head. The handle is also longer than many other rakes, so you won’t have to hunch over nearly as much. The head is made of a sturdy but flexible resin, so the tines won’t break off if you hit a rogue rock. This does mean it won’t be quite as strong as a metal rake, but it will be much more versatile and lighter weight.

The Fiskars Leaf Rake is our best overall pick in our guide to the best rakes, but if you’re looking for an all-metal rake or one suited for more specific tasks, check out our other picks.

Pros: Extra-wide head, extra-long handle, flexible tines won’t snap, lightweight

Cons: Not strong enough to handle large rocks

Read our full buying guide to the best rakes.

The best string trimmer

The battery-powered DeWalt 20V Max Lithium Ion XR String Trimmer boasts excellent cutting power in a lightweight tool that gives you the freedom to precisely edge around garden beds and fences.

A string trimmer is more of a landscaping tool, but if your garden beds are adjacent to your lawn, you’ll want a way to get clean edges without putting your flowers in danger. String trimmers, also known as weed whackers, cut grass where a lawn mower just can’t go.

The DeWalt 20V Max Lithium Ion XR String Trimmer is our top pick in our guide to the best string trimmers because it’s lightweight, has tons of cutting power, and we stand by the DeWalt name. Because it’s battery-powered, you won’t have to deal with gas or running an extension cord from your garage.

Insider Reviews writer Steven John writes, “This trimmer is powered by a 20-volt, five-amp lithium-ion battery that packs plenty of punch, whirling the dual cutting lines around in a 13-inch swath that will easily clear grass, weeds, thorns, and more. The tool can be operated at a high-speed, full-power setting for cutting tougher materials or it can be run at a lower speed for lighter work and for better battery life. Yes, this trimmer costs four times more than other electric options, but it will outperform and outlast them, too.”

Pros: Lightweight, battery-powered, gives you precise control over edging

Cons: Does not come with battery but any DeWalt 20V tool battery will work

Read our full buying guide to the best string trimmers.

The best electric lawn mower

The Ego Power+ 20-Inch Cordless Lawn Mower may be electric, but you won’t sacrifice any power or versatility, and it’s much quieter than gas models.

You’ve put so much work into cultivating a beautiful and nourishing garden, so complete the look of your yard with a well-trimmed lawn. The Ego Power+ is our top pick in our guide to the best electric lawn mowers thanks to its excellent combination of functionality, versatility, power, and quiet operating volume.

Insider Reviews senior home and kitchen reporter Owen Burke writes, “The Ego Power+ 20-Inch Cordless Lawn Mower offers the performance of gas but in a convenient cordless electric design. The mower creates 30% less noise than an average gas-powered model, making it more pleasant to use.

Though this mower is electric, it doesn’t sacrifice power or functionality. The three-in-one function allows you to mulch, bag, or use the side-discharge chute. The push-button start is easy to operate and incredibly convenient, and the LED headlights allow you to mow anytime, provided you have no qualms about disrupting your neighbors after dark.”

The battery will charge to full power in about 30 minutes and you’ll get about 55 minutes worth of cutting time, which should be plenty to mow your average lawn. If you’re doing both the front and back in one swoop, you might find yourself chugging along at the end, so it might be best to give it a quick charge in between.

Pros: Powerful motor, quiet operation, charges quickly, folds for storage, five-year warranty

Cons: May not have enough battery life for large lawns, replacement batteries are expensive

Read our full buying guide to the best electric lawn mowers.