Summer makes me a morning person – I set my alarm around 7 to make myself get up and going before the heat settles in. I like to get outside daily to check on my garden and since the yard will be getting lots of water once monsoon season arrives, there will be some growing so I wanted to clean the yard up a bit. We had our horticulturist come as she does almost twice a year to give us a consultation on what to cut back, water, and fertilize – we have a long to do list!

Fiskars sent me a package full of goodies – I was thrilled to pick out products from their new PowerGear2™ line – to replace our old Fiskars pruning products. We are huge lovers of the orange and black garden tools – we have almost every Fiskars product (I even have them in my sewing and craft box). The new PowerGear2™ line has up to 3x more cutting power! In addition, Gilmour sent watering products to help with our raised garden beds.

I want to give a little tour of our backyard, the tools we use, and how we organize our garden tools!

Pruning Tools

My dad gave me an old pruning book when I bought the house to teach me how to take care of everything. Now I tell Benjamin all the time, “Cut at the elbow” and I stand and instruct him like the boss I am. Just kidding – I can look back and see the big picture and direct him how to cut so he uses his muscles. And sometimes we switch because I like to work in the yard!

PowerGear 2 Lopper – comes in 3 sizes

The 4 major tools I’ve had on hand to maintain our yard

• PowerGear2™ Pruner – for rose bushes, and lower smaller branches up to 3/4″
• PowerGear2™ Lopper – for tree pruning branches up to 2″
• PowerGear2™ Hedge Shears – for trimming and shaping hedges and shrubs
• Non-stick Softgrip® Micro-Tip® Pruning Snip – collecting herbs, smaller flowers

If you have all of these tools you are pretty much set to maintain your yard from herbs, dainty flowers to rose bushes, shrubs and trees.

Non-stick Softgrip® Micro-Tip® Pruning Snip

I forgot how many rose bushes we have, but who needs to count, keep them coming!

PowerGear2™ Pruner

Onto hedging all of our bushes –

I’m so good at hedging – next year look for my bushes shaped as animals! Just kidding, but I was humming a few Disney songs as I was hedging thinking how I would probably have the time of my life shaping their shrubbery!

PowerGear2™ Hedge Shears

Pegboard Storage Door

There’s a door accessible outside that’s right outside our laundry room door. When I was looking to buy the home and opened it, I was so excited to see storage. An organizer at heart, I imagined how I could organize this shallow space with home and garden tools.

On gardening days we unlock the door and use the tools as we walk by – from painting jobs to pruning bushes and trees, it makes it easy to find what we need.

When everything has it’s place and it’s displayed visually like this, it makes yard work even more enjoyable.

Watering Tools

Flexogen Super Duty Hose + Heavy Duty Thumb Control Watering Nozzle 

^^ Use the thumb to move the lever up to stop the water, so convenient! Right now the garden itself is trying its best to hold up, but I don’t focus on that too much right now it’s about pruning our trees.

Dual outlet timer + Flexogen Super Duty Hose + Heavy Duty Thumb Control Watering Nozzle + Quick Connector Set 

We have a raised garden bed on an automatic dual outlet timer connected to the spigot. It leaves a hose free for us to use to spray things down. The Flexogen super duty hose is the strongest hose in its class and has an 8-layer construction which means durable and kink resistance – which is handy because it stinks when the hose kinks and I have to go back a shake the hose straight! The quick connector set is great because you can switch out different heads quickly with just pulling down one side and popping the other one one – great if you have different nozzle tools you want to use with the hose! I just bought a few more so we have them everywhere around the house – garden efficiency my friends!

Tool Shed

We built this tool shed attached to the back of the photo studio – after I kicked pretty much the large garden tools out. It felt more appropriate to have a separate space for the lawn mower, shovels, those sort of things – in the former bunny area.

There’s even electricity in there to charge up those tools when necessary.

Now if you please excuse me, I need to get back to my yard and get pruning!

Thank you Fiskars and Gilmour for sponsoring this post.

gardening