The best gardening tools you can buy

Why you'll love it: Your houseplants will thank you for taking care of them with the Master Craft Indoor Garden Tool Set and the Plastec Indoor Watering Can.

Even an apartment gardener can enjoy the beauty and health benefits of live greenery with a fine collection of houseplants. Some, such as the spider plant, pothos, and Chinese evergreen, not only look beautiful, they also help remove pollutants from the air. Check out our recommendations for the best houseplants you can order online for all our recommendations.

You can improve the greenness of your thumb with a few tools that make indoor gardening easier. With the Master Craft Indoor Garden Tool Set, you get houseplant-sized pruners, transplanter, trowel, and rake, along with a handy case to hold them all. Now you're ready to snip, repot, or remove dead leaves as needed. Add a small watering can from Plastec for those weekly drinks, and you're all set.

Buy the Master Craft Indoor Garden Tool Set on Amazon for $27.16 Buy the Plastec Indoor Watering Can on Amazon for $19.97

Why you'll love it: Growing your own veggies is easy when you have the Bond Culti-Hoe with Telescoping Handle and Fiskars excellent shovel and spade on hand.

With enough sunshine, attention to watering, weeding, fertilizing, and a little bit of luck, you can harvest a surprising amount of fresh, organic, and delicious produce even from a small plot.

If you grow vegetables, then you know the importance of well-worked soil that is free of clumps and rocks, and full of growth-encouraging compost. Two tools that are indispensable in the vegetable garden are a hoe for breaking through hard soil and removing weeds, and a cultivator for breaking up dirt clods into soft, smooth soil.

But that doesn't mean you actually have to purchase two separate tools. Instead, choose the handy Bond Culti-Hoe with Telescoping Handle, which combines the functions of a hoe and a cultivator into one ingenious tool.

You also will regularly use a shovel and a spade. Though the terms are often used interchangeably, and both are digging tools, a shovel has a pointed edge, while a spade has a flat edge. You want a shovel for digging a hole, and a spade for edging, removing grass, or moving piles of dirt or leaves to the trash or compost pile.

Buy the Bond Culti-Hoe with Telescoping Handle on Amazon for $16.18 Buy the Fiskars Long-Handle Digging Shovel on Home Depot for $23.27 (originally $34.99) Buy the Fiskars D-Handle Garden Spade on Amazon for $25.18 (originally $39.89)

Why you'll love it: Trees and shrubs give your home curb appeal, so invest in the Tabor Tools Lopper, Fiskars' Pruning Shears, and the Corona Pruning Saw to keep everything in line.

A mature, full garden usually has a backbone of trees and tall shrubs. To keep things looking tidy, it's good to prune away any dead or broken branches as you notice them, and to clean up your shrubs once or twice a year to keep them from looking overgrown or unkempt. The tools that you'll reach for are loppers, which have long handles and powerful, short blades good for cutting through small to medium branches; pruning shears, which are designed for close-up work on thin branches and vines; and a garden saw, which can handle branches several inches thick.

Buy Tabor Tools Bypass Lopper on Amazon for $27.99 Buy Fiskars All Steel Pruning Shears on Amazon for $9.97 (originally $11.97) Buy the Corona RazorTOOTH Pruning Saw on Amazon for $19.33 (originally $21.99)

Why you'll love it: You need small hand tools keep your plants looking their best, and the Fiskars Tool Set and pruning snip will help you get started, along with a good coil hose.

If pots of colorful annual and perennial flowers — or even small shrubs and vegetables — fill your patio or balcony, then you know the joy of container gardening.

A small selection of good hand tools will help you keep your containers looking great through every season. The Fiskars 3- Piece Set of trowel, transplanter, and cultivator will handle all your needs when it comes to planting your containers. Add the Fiskars pruning snip for deadheading and trimming, and you're basically set.

Lastly, you need the Water Right Professional coil hose because it stays out of the way when you're finished watering your garden.

Buy the Fiskars 3-Piece Softouch Garden Tool Set on Amazon for $17.03 Buy the Fiskars Softouch Micro-Tip Pruning Snip on Amazon for $9.69 (originally $10.86) Buy the 25-foot Water Right Professional Coil Hose on Amazon for $39.99

Why you'll love it: To keep your lawn looking perfect, you need the Garden Weasel manual edger and Fiskars' stand-up weeder to manage weeds, as well as the excellent Gardenite lawn rake and ReLeaf Leaf Scoops for picking up leaves.

If your green, perfect grass is the envy of all who see it, you know how much work it takes to get your lawn looking its best. Mowing, edging, aerating, watering, weeding, fertilizing: The lawn is the most work-intensive area of your yard.

Make that work a little bit easier with a manual edger that gives a clean line to the lawn's edge, a stand-up weeder for making quick work of pesky dandelions, and a lawn rake for sweeping up the fallen leaves of autumn. Once you have the leaves in a pile, set your kids to work scooping them up with ReLeaf Leaf Scoops.

Buy the Garden Weasel Edge Chopper on Amazon for $37.92 Buy the Fiskars Deluxe Stand-Up Weeder on Amazon for $38.83 Buy the Gardenite Leaf Rake on Amazon for $27.95 (originally $39.95) Buy the ReLeaf Leaf Scoops on Amazon for $32.95

The best gardening gloves you can buy

If you spend a lot of time in the garden, you need a good pair of gardening gloves. We've poured over expert reviews to find the best ones.

To protect yourself from dirt, thorns, chemicals, and other irritants; you need a good pair of gardening gloves.

Here are the best gardening gloves you can buy 2019:

• Best overall: Atlas Showa NT370 Nitrle Gloves
• Best leather gloves: StoneBreaker Gardening Glove
• Best for comfort: Bionic Women's Relief Grip Gardening Gloves
• Best for rose gardening: Exemplary Gardens Rose Pruning Gloves
• Best for kids: Wells Lamont Kids Work Gloves with Safety Cuff
• Best for hand digging: Garden Genie Gloves
• Best for a snug fit: Foxglove Original Gloves

The best garden hoses you can buy

If you've got plants to water, a car to wash, or a sprinkler to connect so the kids can splash around this summer, then you're going to need a good garden hose.

Here are the best garden hoses you can buy in 2019:

• Best garden hose overall: Craftsman Premium Rubber Garden Hose
• Best lightweight garden hose: Water Right 400 Series Slim & Light Garden Hose
• Best coiled hose: Orbit 26380 50-Foot Coil Hose
• Best expandable garden hose: Hospaip Expandable Water Hose
• Best low-cost garden hose: Beaulife Steel Garden Hose
• Best irrigation hose: Melnor Flat Soaker Garden Hose

The best shovels you can buy for gardening

If your shovel-buying strategy has consisted of choosing the cheapest tool on the shelf, we're here to tell you that while there is certainly no reason to break the budget on a shovel, it's also true that you generally get what you pay for, and a quality garden tool should last you for many years if taken care of.

That's why we decided to do the research for you, and gather up this list of the best shovels and spades out there for a variety of uses. While we think the Fiskars Long-Handle Round-Point Steel Digging Shovel is the best garden shovel overall, we also recommend several others that serve different purposes.

Here are the best garden shovels and spades you can buy:

• Best shovel overall: Fiskars Long-Handle Round-Point Steel Digging Shovel
• Best short garden shovel: Bond Mini D-Handle Shovel
• Best garden spade: Fiskars D-Handle Garden Spade
• Best garden scoop: Ames D-Handle Aluminum Scoop
• Best garden trowel: Wilcox All Pro 14-Inch Trowel

The best rakes you can buy

It's fall, and for many people, that means it's time to break out the trusty old garden rake to take care of all those falling leaves.

To save you some time and energy, we've rounded up the best rakes you can buy to pick up leaves and perform other garden tasks. Read on to see which rake is best for your needs.

Here are the best rakes you can buy:

• Best rake overall:Fiskars Leaf Rake
• Best adjustable rake: Gardenite 63-inch Adjustable Garden Leaf Rake
• Best leaf scoops: ReLeaf Leaf Scoops
• Best kid's rake: Toysmith 27-Inch Kid's Metal Leaf Rake with Hardwood Handle
• Best bow rake: Bully Tools Bow Rake
• Best small rake: Corona RK 62060 Fixed Shrub Rake

The best gardening books you can buy

Starting your own garden can be overwhelming, so it helps to do your research and figure out what kind of garden you want to grow based on your needs, goals, and available space.

Whether you're looking to design a secret flower garden in your backyard, turn your lawn into your own private vegetable farm, or just want to beautify your fire escape with a few choice potted plants, you'll find your starting point in one of our top gardening book picks.

Here are the best gardening books you can buy:

• Best overall: "Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture" by Toby Hemenway
• Best for beginners: "The Garden Primer" by Barbara Damrosch
• Best for edible gardens: "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" by Edward C. Smith
• Best for container gardens: "All New Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew
• Best for sustainable gardens: "Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening" by Fern Marshall Bradley
  

The best electric lawn mowers you can buy

Electric lawn mowers are ideal if you have minimal storage space and don't want to deal with the hassle of storing gasoline and oil. Electric mowers tend to weigh much less than their gas-powered counterparts, so they can be easier to transport and use.

We picked our favorite electric lawn mowers based on a number of factors, including versatility, power, battery life, features, and overall performance. They're available at a variety of price points, so you should be able to find something that works for your budget and needs.

• Best electric lawn mower overall: EGO Power+ 20-Inch Cordless Lawn Mower
• Best electric mulching lawn mower: DeWalt 20-Inch 20V Cordless Lawn Mower
• Best corded electric lawn mower: Earthwise 20-Inch Corded Electric Lawn Mower
• Best budget electric lawn mower: Greenworks 20-Inch 12-Amp Corded Lawn Mower
• Best electric riding lawn mower: Ryobi 38-Inch Battery Electric Rear Engine Riding Lawn Mower