Home » Plants & Animals » Virtual Gardening » Christmas Shopping for the Power Gardener

Christmas Shopping for the Power Gardener

© Carol Wallace

By all rights, an article on gifts for gardeners should have gone up sometime in September so that all the organized gift-givers of the world could have profited from the suggestions, finished their shopping and sat back and breathed a sigh of relief, knowing the Christmas madness was finished.

I'm not that organized.

I am, however, organized enough to have done my web-walking, and discovered that at least half of the other garden writers on the Web have done that article already. So you should already have most of your shopping done. But there's always one person who presents a problem — and maybe I can help.

You know the type. We call them "power gardeners" because their concern is really less with creating beautiful growing things than it is with being able to display the latest and greatest plants, tools and gadgets.Gardening for Success is the book they would most like to read; one nice gift might be for you to write that book for them, just to make sure they never miss out on any of the more elegant trappings of their avocation.

However, power gardeners are not usually big on home-made gifts, so instead be prepared to break out your wallet and break the bank. You may want to start small: a couple of nice garden tools or a plant. Some nice walnut-handled tools in a custom-made box might do the trick — a bargain at only 198 pounds sterling! And how about a nice tree peony to give them a chance to use the tools? Roger Mercer's new 1997 introduction, 'Dark Amethyst' might fill the bill nicely! It's a mere $150 — a bargain as new daylily introductions go, and is a beautiful and rare shade of deep blue-purple, sure to be the envy of every gardener in the neighborhood. They will be the first on the block to own it, and if you play your cards right, they may share a fan with you next year! (And if you're nice, you'll share a fan with me — this truly is one beautiful plant!)

But these may not be ostentatious enough to suitably impress. A true power gardener may prefer something like this beautiful copper birdbath or any of these other luxurious garden ornaments to show how much they love the wild life in their gardens. If they don't love the wildlife in their gardens, they may be absolutely delighted with the seven-inch copper grasshopper sculpture on the same page. If I were a deer and saw that staring at me I'd think twice before I nibbled the tree peony!