The irony of selling pruning tools

As it's now officially autumn (from Friday 23rd September) and the need to begin to cut, prune, and tame the year’s growth in readiness for next year, we feel - in the interest of honesty - that we ought to set the record straight. There may be an assumption that because we have carefully selected what we think are the best pruning tools, that we have a pristine garden that has been cut back and pruned to an inch of its life.

The opposite is true. We both have a preference for rambling. We love a bit of overgrown wilderness. And neither of us like the process of cutting things back in the garden. We know that it’s for the good of the plant. That it’s often better to look at too. But we just both have a bit of an aversion to tempering nature, to pruning, and cutting back.

Deadheading is a different matter - so the Niwaki sentei secateurs, or the Niwaki garden snips are often in hand to keep plants in the garden flowering (especially the roses) during the summer months.

But it’s when it comes to full scale pruning that we both hesitate. Yes there is something incredibly satisfying when using the Niwaki shears (large or mini - both have a rather brilliant ‘snip’ sound that accompanies your gardening), the Niwaki loppers are enjoyable because they cut so easily that it never fails to surprise you just how good they are in cutting larger branches.

My father is the ‘king’ of pruning. Everything is culled and cut. The garden looks like it’ll never recover. Ours often looks barely touched. And of course, come the next season, his garden thrives and ours gets more out of control and woody.

So perhaps this pruning and cutting back season we will put our garden cutting tools to better use - rather than just a light prune, we’ll go full cut. The Niwaki garden tools will cope with it admirably. Us on the other hand will have our hearts in our mouth and will hate the outcome, but next season we’ll have a garden that’s a little less wild!