"Mike Lyle" wrote in message
...
Janet Baraclough wrote:
The message
from Kate Morgan contains these words:

my grandson will be 5 in a few weeks time and he is to have a
piece
of garden to work and hopefully learn how to grow things :-) I
think
that a good birthday gift would be gardening tools, can anyone
recommend a good make that would be suitable for this young man.

Give him his own proper adult sized hand-fork, trowel and
dibber.You could also give him a strong polypropylene 2-gallon
bucket
(for carrying tools, collecting stones and weeds) and one-gallon
plastic watering can. IME, children don't like child-sized
tool-sets
of any kind (which they correctly perceive to be toys, not fit for
real work) and much prefer to use the proper ones they see adults
using.

And in my expensive experience, once they're big enough for proper
but child-sized tools (Bulldog, among others, make lovely ones) they
won't want to use them. The hoe was quite useful to me, though,
despite the short handle: nice and narrow.


The 5-year old next door to me shuns tools and does all his gardening using
his fingers. Mind you, his gardening mostly consists of throwing worms at
his sister.

Steve