'If garden tools really count as weaponry, I’m in command of a small arsenal'

Illustration by Clara Dupré

If you are any kind of a gardener, you understand equipment lust. Just because the poor hipster had possibly over accessorised with Japanese horticultural apparatus doesn’t mean he deserves the slammer.

And, for me personally, this raises worrying questions. On the long muddy trudge home from the allotment, berry juice up to my elbows, crushed plums dripping from my rucksack, I’ve come to expect passers-by giving me a wide berth. I’d assumed their rictus smiles were merely pity, but are they fearing attack? Do I need to hide my compost scoop?

My Garden-Centre Lock-Up Hell (ibid) has shaken me; I can’t do time again. But, even as I worried, a thought struck me: might this lead to cautious allotmenteers abandoning their more dangerous equipment? Might this be… an opportunity?

Once, my interest in garden goods was modest. I needed little; I’d buy the cheapest trowel, the flimsiest loppers and then, when either I or they broke, cast them aside and use my hands. Better still was a gift. My friend Rosie’s wooden-handled shears? Let me, hedgeless, at them. A cementy builder’s spade, an ancient hay-scythe? Ideal.

I was extremely proud of my 32-year-old Freecycle wheelbarrow, handed over like samizdat by a nice couple in a church car park; so what if I could barely push it? Luckily, new tools were untempting. There were only three types: Beefy Workaday, Anxiously Ladylike, or Mitfordian. None worked for me.

When it came to buying tools, I had a fail-safe method: extensive research, long rumination and then choosing, unfailingly, the worst possible option. My father calls me Incapability Mendelson; I prefer Chieftan of the False Economies.

A border fork? That super heavy yet frail one, please. A branch saw, pre-rusted? Perfect.

I made one major investment: telescopic pruners, to stop my neighbours’ multi-storey Virginia creeper filling up my entire garden, like an all-you-can-eat slug buffet. I approached it professionally: after a mere two hours lining up the anchor-eye to the opposite outer secondary pulley and securing the cord beneath the lower fly slide bolt with a basic Portuguese double bowline hitch, I was wielding the 2m-long handles, first at arm’s length, then supported on my thigh, before the glistening jaws locked a final time.

At that point I made two discoveries. One, the garden was now waist-deep in clippings while, just out of reach, uncountable boughs of ivy and buddleja were joyously inhaling sunlight, thrilled that I’d reduced the competition. Second, I had snipped through the cord.

But then came the real crisis. Garden tools became stylish – and I fell, hard.Like many addicts, I had an enabler. Lizzie, my generous adoptive aunt, decided I needed a traditional Japanese “hori hori”; , pointy Niwaki carbon steel, well… dagger. It’s the best thing I own.

Unfortunately, now I’m raging. Where’s my Funky Orange four-step ladder, my herbaceous sickle? I need functioning secateurs, bypass and anvil and all the pocket knives, plus other hori horis, for home use. Oh, and a reinforced waterproof pouch to hide them in, with my sole surviving glove.

Plus, what use is a holster without the correct belt, particularly as the witty website suggests I wear it “gunslinger-style”. Are these people... inside my mind?

I kneed a kneeler. I long for an axe, preferably hickory. I require every single item made by Nutscene: twine in neon, chunky, spooled. At the sight of their saffron jute I audibly gasped.

Garden & Wood sell many basic necessities, such as a glass cucumber straightener, and a mistletoe hook. I’m personally offended not to own a Great Dixter tickling fork; Objects of Use has a carbon-steel cuttlefish hoe with my name on it. Not literally of course; engraving is for lightweights. Which, with my new botanical vasculum, I don’t plan to be.

I’m actually relieved to spot something I don’t want: slate plant labels, topiary clippers, anything “curated”; precisely the goods that one will go on regifting.

And there’s one area of hortimerch I can resist: power tools. I can barely use a felt-tip without injury; one swipe of a strimmer and I’d be legless. I’ve asked my allotment neighbours to shun me if I ask to borrow anything motorised; there’s an official first-aid kit, but I doubt it includes balloon tamponades.

And the truth is that any gardening equipment, however impressive or beautiful, pales into insignificance beside the contents of my pockets: a child’s teaspoon, blunt scissors, a pencil, snapped hairties. With these I will work miracles. If necessary, in a prison yard.