The Best Christmas Gardening Gifts (Useful & Unique Items)

Some of the best Christmas gardening gifts for home vegetable gardeners including the latest books, stocking fillers, useful gardening tools, and things that gardeners need but wouldn’t think to buy themselves. Also, a list of a few things to avoid buying for your beloved gardener friend or family member.

If you’re lucky enough to have a gardener in your life, then you’re likely getting gifts all year round. Fresh veggies from the garden, bouquets of beautiful flowers, exercise from being drafted in for work, and of course, all the cardio from those lovely garden tours. What better way to show your appreciation than by treating them with the best Christmas gardening gifts that you can find?

I’m going to take you through some of the items that gardeners will find useful and exciting and might not be buying for themselves. Also some of the best items that I can recommend after many years of trialing garden products and gardening gifts myself. There are also many more items showcased in the Lovely Greens Amazon shop.

Useful Gardening Gifts for Christmas

People who garden tend to have a practical side. We need tools that last, ways to organize the garden and our seeds, and items that make gardening easier and more bountiful. Here are some top picks that make great Christmas gardening gifts that hit the mark.

1. This seed organizer is absolutely genius!
2. A hori hori knife. The best garden tool I’ve owned! This is my exact model
3. Metal hoops and netting from Gardening Naturally (UK only)
4. Gardeners love composting food waste in Wormeries
5. A magic rust remover for garden tools. ESSENTIAL & most people don’t have one.
6. A PlantSurge water magnetizer for bigger and healthier plants: USA / UK
7. Coffee flask for warm drinks while working outside
8. A garden trug that allows you to harvest and rinse your vegetables USA / UK
9. Garden tools from Niwaki. They are the best brand I’ve used.
10. Attractive, waterproof and sturdy gardening boots.
11. This clear window bird feeder. I have two of these ones
12. A Bokashi Composter is a way to start composting ALL food scraps, even meat
13. More garden gift ideas are over here

The Best Garden Books from this Year

One of the best parts of post-Christmas gardening is flipping through seed catalogs, reading gardening books, and making plans for next year’s garden. Gardening magazine subscriptions are a great gift idea, especially if you know which ones they already read. Books though are the best, though. There’s nothing like curling up after the holidays soaking in pages of gardening inspiration. Here’s my top ten list:

1. A Woman’s Garden by Tanya Anderson
2. No Dig by Charles Dowding
3. The Complete Gardener by Monty Don
4. The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander
5. Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre
6. The Vegetable Grower’s Handbook by Huw Richards
7. Floret Farm’s Cut Flower Garden
8. First Time Gardener by Jessica Sowards
9. The Ecological Gardener by Matt Rees-Warren
10. The Orchard Book by Wade Muggleton
11. More great garden books are over here

Small Gardening Gifts and Stocking Fillers

These items are perfect if you’re looking for a small gift as a Secret Santa or for Christmas stockings. All are inexpensive but high quality and will definitely get used.

1. Seed Planting Ruler (very useful!)
2. Natural fiber garden twine
3. Reusable slate plant labels
4. Terracotta plant waterers
5. Comfortable boot socks
6. Gift voucher to a local independent garden center or nursery
7. Garden dibber (for easy planting of bulbs, seeds, and seedlings)
8. Gardening gloves
9. Organic seeds from Real Seed Catalogue (UK) or Bakercreek Seeds (USA)
10. A membership to Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library (Britain & Europe only)

Grow-Your-Own Garden Gifts

One of the best gifts that you could get a gardener, is something that grows or helps plants to grow. It could be packets of seeds, a houseplant, or some of these sure-to-please ideas:

1. Survival Garden Heirloom Seed Set (32 varieties)
2. Mushroom-growing kits
3. Calamondin citrus plant (I use the small fruits on mine like lemons)
4. Microgreens Seed Sprouter – great for “gardening” in winter
5. Funky Veg Garden Starter Kit
6. Tulip bulbs to plant in winter for spring blooms
7. Bonsai tree to grow indoors
8. Seed Packet Advent Calendar. Either purchased or DIY’d with festive envelopes.
9. A miniature fruit tree that can be grown in a container. I have two!
10. Heritage variety garlic. You plant garlic in autumn and winter and specialty varieties, including elephant garlic, make excellent gifts

Gifts for the Lucky Gardener

If you’re out to impress, then you cannot go wrong with these larger garden gift ideas. They range in price, but often can be delivered as a flat-pack or as a gift voucher.

1. Vegepod raised bed for patios and balconies (I love mine!)
2. Garden shredder for easier composting — I got one for my birthday this year!
3. A garden work bench / potting bench. You can also DIY one.
4. Coldframe for hardening off seedlings and growing plants
5. A new greenhouse or polytunnel
6. Small garden storage shed or larger potting shed
7. A trip to visit one of the recipient’s favorite garden destinations

Avoid these Gardening Gifts

While you’re shopping for your loved one please keep something in mind. I and almost every gardener I know have received a lot of “Gifts for Gardeners.” Well-meaning but flimsy sets of poorly made tools, cotton gloves (that leave your hands soaked), hand cream, and kneeling pads. Honestly, 99% of what’s in a mass-produced gardener gift doesn’t end up getting used. Here’s a list of other things to avoid when shopping, or at least to be wary of:

• Girlie-gardening items. Pink/floral gardening items are usually low quality.
• Badger-inspired gardening gloves. They don’t work.
• Gardening journals. Most people don’t use these.
• Hand cream, unless you know the exact brand that they already use.
• Kneeling pads (we tend to have them already)
• Garden toolsets. As a general rule, tools that come in sets are of low quality.
• Indoor grow-your-own gardening sets. Other than mushrooms, they’re usually a novelty
• Gardening gadgets, unless the recipient has clearly shown an interest in one
• Anything that’s primarily made of plastic as it could be flimsy. We may also avoid using plastic in the garden too.

More Christmas Gardening and Plant Inspiration

• Make a Christmas Wreath with Foraged Greenery
• Genius Holiday Decoration using Greenery and a COLANDER
• How to Plant a Winter Vegetable Garden
• Creative Ways to Celebrate the Winter Solstice