This is a commissioned post in collaboration with Fiskars
The gardening season is well and truly underway, and it’s time to get busy 🙂
Spring and summer are usually the time of year when the garden demands the most from us. With plants putting on growth spurts, weeds doing the same, and warmer weather creating the need to keep up with watering, it can all feel a bit stressful!
I’m feeling the gardening pressure in a different way this year, because we’re in the middle of a big re-design. We’ve had a new patio built, and the work has taken it’s toll on the rest of the garden. So, we’re now taking the opportunity to turn the chaos into a new layout. All very exciting, but a bit daunting at the same time.
I really don’t like the idea of anything to do with gardening feeling like a chore, or causing stress in any way. It’s a hobby, something that should create positive feelings and boost wellbeing, not turn into just another thing on the to-do list. For me, gardening is a way to de-stress after a tough day, to connect with nature, and to generally get some perspective. It’s also a fantastic way to spend time with the kids, away from screens, work and the general fast pace of family life.
I think simply deciding to put less pressure on yourself when it comes to the garden is a great way to take the stress out of it. There’s no way you can ever be in control of nature, and where’s the fun in that anyway? Being a bit kinder to yourself, doing what gardening you can fit in, and going with the flow is going to create far more happiness than a perfect lawn. Which is a good job, since my lawn is looking very sorry for itself right now!
I’ve also learned – often the hard way – that having good tools can make a huge difference to how much time and effort a garden task requires. This of course impacts on your entire gardening experience. I once tried to dig up a big clump of geraniums with a hand trowel; I spent ages getting nowhere, got very stressed into the bargain, and learned my lesson. Now I use a full-size fork and the job is satisfyingly quick and easy.
Fiskars have got a lovely 0% Stress, 100% Happiness campaign running at the moment, focusing on how their tools can take the stress out of gardening. If you’re not familiar with Fiskars already, they’re a Finnish manufacturer of premium gardening tools which are all designed to make gardening easier and more efficient. The Fiskars range is available at all good garden centres.
To tie in with the 0% Stress, 100% Happiness campaign, Fiskars are offering customers a 100% Happiness Guarantee. If you’re 100% happy with your Fiskars purchase after 60 days, you’ll be rewarded with a voucher of up to £20 (depending on amount spent) to spend back in store. If you’re not 100% happy, you can follow the returns procedure to get your money back. You just need to spend £50 or more on their products at participating retailers and register your proof of purchase before 30th June. So you can upgrade your tools for happier gardening and get rewarded at the same time – pretty good isn’t it?
Fiskars asked me to join in with the 0% Stress, 100% Happiness campaign, using their tools to take the stress out of gardening. They sent us some products from their Light range, which offers lightweight but sturdy tools that are really easy to handle. They’re ideal for those of us who aren’t super-strong, and also great for older kids to use.
As I’ve already mentioned, the garden is a bit of a work in progress at the moment. We’re about to have the lawn removed and replaced, and there’s lots of preparation we need to do before that happens. Any plants we want to keep need to be removed, and the whole area needs to be cleared as much as possible. Quite a challenge for keeping things stress-free!
Here’s what we’ve been up to with our Fiskars tools.
The first job on the list was to rake up all the spring blossom from the lawn. The Leaf Rake made this job super-quick, and even our youngest was able to handle it easily. There’s something very satisfying about raking up leaves and petals; I guess it’s the gardening equivalent of sweeping a floor!
Next we tackled some of the larger plants that needed to be moved to a temporary home, using the Digging Spade.
You might think that a spade needs to be really heavy to withstand all the pressure you put on it, and while it isn’t designed for hard or rocky ground, the Light spade worked just as well as any other spade I’ve used.
I really like the pointed cutting edge, it makes it much easier to get it into the soil. It’s quite compact too, which is ideal for tight spaces in borders.
The Soil Rake took the strain out of removing a lot of pebbles from the earth and levelling it out ready for the new lawn. It will be really useful when we’re adding soil to the new borders too.
I’ve been making do with some really blunt garden scissors, and using the Universal Garden Scissors was an absolute joy in comparison. They’ve got extra hard stainless steel blades and a really comfy handle. They’re perfect for pruning herbs, tidying up young shoots and cutting flowers to take indoors.
So, did the Fiskars tools take the stress out of gardening? Most definitely. I really enjoyed using them, they did a great job, and they’re practical storage-wise too. They’re all going to be getting a lot of use over the next few weeks as we crack on with transforming the garden!
What do you do to make gardening 0% stress, 100% happiness?
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