Garden gifts make the world a better place

Gardening is the only activity that fulfills all five senses, is good for your health (all that fresh air and exercise), your wealth (fresh produce and improving your home’s curb appeal) and – just like Christmas – promotes peace and good will. Celebrate and encourage the gardeners you know or plant the seed of gardening with one of these gift suggestions:

Dirt-cheap stocking stuffers

Give gloves that keep fingers dry. Every gardener needs new gloves, especially the type with the nitrile fingertips and palm. Winter and early spring weather is wet and wild so in our climate you need several pair. The simple luxury of slipping on a dry pair of gloves in the middle of a wet job cannot be overstated.

Quality pruning tools a cut above

If you’ve got thorny plants, you need long-handled loppers. Blackberry brambles, rose canes and hard-to-reach overhead branches are not the pruning tasks I look forward to but, when armed with my long-handled loppers, I feel superhuman because the jaws slice through branches so easily. The loppers are perfect for winter pruning of cedar, nandina, holly and other greens to deck the halls.

Garden Show Tickets are easy to wrap

If you’ve attended the Tacoma Home and Garden Show in the past, you know how welcome that bit of spring is during the winter. You can order show tickets online at www.Tacomahomeandgardenshow.com for less than $10 and treat someone to an early spring.

This year the show runs Jan. 24-27 at the Tacoma Dome. I’ll be speaking Thursday through Saturday and hope to see my readers there. Mention this newspaper at my talk and you may even win tickets to the Northwest Flower and Garden show, Feb. 20-24 at the Washington State Convention Center. If you want to give discounted tickets to the NWFG show now, go online to www.gardenshow.com.

Support your local nursery – give gift certificates to keep growing

Winter is for scheming and dreaming and also for researching just the right variety of tree or shrub to enhance a landscape. Any gift that celebrates gardening helps to make the world a better place. Don’t commercialize Christmas, go green instead.

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For more gardening information, Marianne Binetti can be reached at her Web site, www.binettigarden.com.