Gifts for Gardners

What kind of gift will make the face of a retired gardener light up?

If your grandmother is a gardener who likes to grow roses or vegetables, you may wonder what kind of gift she would really use and love. Women over 65 probably have all the cologne and decorative soaps and jewelry they will ever use.  If you ask what she wants she will probably say not to get her anything -- that there's nothing she really needs anymore. So how do you get such a person a gift she will enjoy?.

I am now over 65, and I love my garden. But it's getting harder to do the gardening I love. As we get older, it isn't as easy as it used to be to kneel down to weed, to plant seeds, and to transplant. Arthritis begins to make it harder to get up from a kneeling position, and hands complain about repetitive motions and simply can't grip tools as they used to. Our skin gets thinner, and scratches from thorns on weeds, roses and berries do more damage than they used to. Some older gardeners have also been told by their doctors to keep out of the sunlight because of skin cancer risk.

But we don't want to give up our gardens. What we need is a bit of help. We often don't have the money,  but even if we do, we feel guilty about spending it on "spoiling" ourselves. We're used to making do with what we have unless we are rich enough to buy anything we want.

Most of us, though, have a mental wish list we've made as we look through the many catalogs we get from seed companies. Your gardening mom, grandmother, or aunt might want one of the items from my wish list below. There's something on it for every budget. I have actually broken down and finally purchased a couple of these items because I really needed them too much to go without them until someone figured  that I needed them. I no longer have a Santa in my life.