gifts for gardeners

Celebrate a Gardener’s Holiday

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Amaryllis (Hippeastrum sp.) is a pleasure to watch unfold.

Celebrate your green thumb this holiday season with everything from décor to gifts.

Bring the garden indoors with plants, plants, and more plants. Start some amaryllis bulbs or paperwhites. Bank poinsettias in a bay window. 

Top a delicate cyclamen with a gardening cloche or delight in the blooms of a Christmas cactus or orchid. These plants will add beauty and satisfy your need to play in the dirt.

Moth orchid (Phalaenopsis sp.). Photo: Pixabay

To keep your plants lush and lovely throughout the holiday season, check out the care tips in our Home and Garden Information Center fact sheets. Here are a few to get you started:

Go natural for decorations. Snip some holly or evergreen boughs and stuff them in baskets and pots. Add some winterberry or curly willow branches for flair. Fill a pottery bowl with pinecones.  

Native winterberry jazzes up holiday arrangements.
Photo: M. Talabac

Jazz up outside containers with evergreens and colorful branches for some welcoming eye candy.  

Weave yarrow, baby’s breath, statice, hydrangea blossoms, and other dried flowers into wreaths, swags, and arrangements. Stuff an antique pitcher with an armful of Lunaria’s silvery seed pods.  

Take a walk through a meadow with your clippers and a big basket and discover an abundance of interesting grasses, seed pods, and natural forms to enhance your holiday decorating.  

Leave them natural or dust them lightly with a bit of gold or silver spray paint for a bit of holiday sparkle.  

Next, add a few purchased decorations that mirror your passion for gardening. Tie tiny copper watering can ornaments onto your tree. Use zinc or copper plant markers as gift tags.  

And just for fun, decorate a child’s holiday tree with brightly colored kids’ gardening gloves and tools you can later donate to a school garden.

Gifts for gardeners are a breeze. Give hand-softening soaps and lotions. Wrap a bunch of fresh holly in festive tissue. Pot an amaryllis bulb or other plant in a handsome pot.  

Look for classic garden jewelry with blossoms cast in silver or gold. Or give a gift from your garden such as homemade pesto, a rooted houseplant cutting, or seeds collected from a favorite plant.   

Are you crafty? Indulge your artistic side to create homemade gifts with a gardener’s touch. 

Lavender sachets made from homegrown lavender make lovely gifts. 

I give friends tins filled with lavender cookies made with lavender from my garden. I delight in friends’ gifts of hand-stitched sachets, dried flower bunches, and potted herbs.  

I can hear the guys out there saying, “Enough with the girly stuff, whatcha got for me?” Tools, dudes.  And yes, we gals like tools, too. 

Check out your local garden centers, then hit the catalogs. Two of my favorites are Lee Valley and Gardener’s Supply. Both have quality tools and other garden gear.  

And in my book, you simply cannot go wrong with a gardening book. New or used, your favorite reads and references will help to grow your gardening friends’ libraries and know-how. 

Whether yours is a homemade or store-bought holiday, make your home and gifts a beautiful reflection of your passion for gardening.  

By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension.

This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.

Holiday gift ideas for gardeners

Maryland GrowsLeave a comment
branch of a fir tree with holiday lights in the background

Can you hear them? Tiny little elves are softly singing carols. The holidays must be around the corner.

If you’re scratching your head for gift ideas for the gardeners in your life, the Master Gardeners and I can help. Here are a few suggestions to make smiles wider and green thumbs greener.

Tools are cool. Yes, we say we really don’t need yet another tool. We lie. Our eyes light up at the flash of steel and the smoothness of a wooden handle. 

A Hori Hori soil knife – a multipurpose tool with a serrated edge and slight curve that digs, plants, cuts, weeds, and more – is a perennial favorite.

hori hori sitting on garden soil next to planted garlic
Used here to plant garlic, a Hori Hori knife also digs, cuts, weeds, and more.

Folding saws are a marvel for pruning in tight spots. Garden kneelers let you work sitting or kneeling with grips to give you a boost in getting up. If you’re over 50, you get it.

We gardeners are always looking for our next favorite garden glove. I have two: a waterproof glove and a sturdy but breathable pair with cushioned fingertips and palms.  

red garden gloves
A good pair of gloves is an indispensable gardening tool and a fine holiday gift idea.  

Gardeners love books. Doug Tallamy’s Nature’s Best Hope and Bringing Nature Home top many Master Gardeners’ wish lists as do other conservation-minded books.

Magazine subscriptions make fine gifts, too. How about Horticulture, Fine Gardening or Birds & Blooms? 

I treasure handmade gifts, both to give and receive. Gifts from the garden – such as pesto, jam, and herbal liqueurs – are especially welcome.  

If you’re crafty, sew a garden apron, paint garden markers or make a hypertufa pot. If bigger is better, make a birdhouse, potting bench, or trellis. 

Good things also come in small packages. Seeds make great gifts.

Botanical Interests offers blends for butterflies, pollinators, and more in beautiful, informative seed packets. The Hudson Valley Seed Company sells heirloom seeds in incredibly artful packets. 

Bundle small gifts into a pot or gift basket. One Master Gardener fondly remembers an upcycled vintage bushel basket filled with bulbs, a bulb planter, and handmade plant markers.

Still stumped? How about a gardening calendar for year-round enjoyment or a garden-themed jigsaw puzzle that keeps twitchy gardening fingers busy in the winter months? 

You can’t go wrong with a gift card to a favorite garden center or online store. I used to disdain gift cards, but now embrace them because the recipient can get just what they want and need.

Always welcome is the gift of time. Why not give a busy gardener a coupon good for a few hours of planting, weeding, watering, or tending? For many of us that is the best gift of all.

Among my many gifts are my Master Gardeners. Thanks to Master Gardeners Lori, Ann, Will, Chanelle, Marcia, Dusty, Michelle, Susan, Catherine, Karen, Judy, and Sharon for their suggestions for this column. 

We hope we’ve given you some ideas to jump-start your holiday gift-giving. 

By Annette Cormany, Principal Agent Associate and Master Gardener Coordinator, Washington County, University of Maryland Extension. This article was previously published by Herald-Mail Media. Read more by Annette.