12 best garden trowels for repotting, digging and bedding in plants

Best: Overall

Why don’t more trowels have cushioned handles? Traditionalists might well wince at the thought of anything other than suitably weathered wood, but this brilliant trowel was the reason our wrists were entirely ache-free after a seriously strenuous digging session.

Another feature worth highlighting is the ridge designed to prevent sweaty, soily hands from slipping in the direction of the shovel end – a simple but genius addition which allowed us to apply extra downward force. Believe it or not, it gets better – the shovel has engraved measurements and the narrow indent to the left of the handle can be used to cut material such as string.

Best for: Seedlings

This is the lightest trowel we’ve come across. Initially, we were slightly annoyed to see it skitter across our lawn thanks to a particularly heavy gust of wind, but all is forgiven. It’s a trowel jam-packed which features worth their weight in gold, whether it’s the measurements on (both sides of) the shovel end, the handy thumb grip or the two-tone plastic – the flash of bright orange on the handle means it’s impossible to misplace.

The best bit? The orange-coloured plastic section slides out – we used its pointed end as a dibber to make holes for seeds, and the flat, wide end to help ease seedlings into freshly-dug holes.

Best for: Transplanting small plants and bulbs

We loved the fact that B&Q’s trowel comes with a care guide (hence we’re now regularly treating our trowel to applications of linseed oil), an unexpected extra for a garden tool which costs just £7. The combination of ultra-sharp edges and an extra-long handle makes this one of the best gardening trowels in terms of versatility – we used it to transplant seeds, dig out pot-bound bulbs and carve out a hole for an apple tree, and it coped with these very different jobs incredibly well.

An extra-long handle allowed for plenty of grip and we loved the generous size of the hanging loop – all too many garden trowels have ridiculously short lengths of cord which we’d struggle to sling over the tiniest of twigs.

Best for: Gardeners on a budget

We never thought we’d find ourselves fawning over a garden trowel (and fork) but Dunelm has changed all that with its super-shiny double act – a stainless steel trowel and fork. Why aren’t more garden tools this shiny?

Admittedly it’s finish doesn’t serve much purpose (although the trowel doubled as a good mirror when it came to wiping smudges of soil from our brow), but there’s substance as well as style here. The trowel’s sharp rim cut through soil like butter, and the closeness of the trowel’s shovel to the handle allowed for unbeatable control.

Best for: Easy use

Yes, you did read that correctly: Wilko’s fork and trowel set costs just £2, although to be honest, we’d pay double this amount just for the trowel. It’s a reminder that plastic trowels shouldn’t be written off – the fact it’s crafted (okay, moulded) from a single piece of plastic means no weak spots, and it’s incredibly light – the trowel weighs just 63 grams (yes, we really did weigh it). Despite this, it feels surprisingly rugged – there wasn’t a hint of flex when we stabbed it into a pot of dense, sandy soil, and the highly tapered end made it a great tool for transplanting seeds, too.

Best for: Transplanting larger bulbs

With its tapered, narrow shape and thick shovel, this is a sturdy trowel which is perfect for some seriously precise planting. The heavily angled neck made it easy to root out seedlings from the smallest of pots, and the reassuringly chunky handle – a chocolate-brown wood sourced from sustainable forests – was a joy to hold.

We’d recommend this to gardeners prone to clumsiness – the shovel’s edges are rounded, minimising the risk of painful nicks, and the deepness of the shovel reduces the risk of accidental soil spillages.

Best for: Bedding areas

An essential tool when it came to getting to the bulbs/clods/weeds other trowels couldn’t reach, Wilkinson Sword’s stainless steel long handled trowel is a thing of beauty. With an elegant pine handle, a chestnut-brown leather strap and a shallow, tapered shovel, we found it especially useful for tending to areas which required a certain amount of care, such as flower-filled borders and strips of bedding plants. The longer handle provided fantastic stability and meant less crouching and bending – a godsend for anyone prone to aches and pains.

Best for: Appearance

Proof that trowels can be both beautiful and practical, Wilko’s carbon steel hand trowel pairs a curve of beautiful marble-effect metal with a polypropylene handle – one imprinted with deep finger grips which allowed us to keep a tight hold on this trowel during a particularly wet and windy seedling transplanting session. The shallow curve on the shovel end meant it could be used as a great soil smoother – we used it to tamp down freshly-seeded compost. It’s built to last too – we were especially impressed with the epoxy powder-coated head, which will keep rust at bay. More stock is expected from 11 June.

Best for: Tough jobs

We never paid much attention to branding before, but the branding on this reassuringly weighty trowel is truly sublime: Spear and Jackson in deep, dark lettering forged into the knotted wood. This top gardening tool brand has clearly gone for strength over sharpness here – the tapered end of the trowel’s shovel might not be as sharp as the edges on other trowels, but the shorter handle meant more power, allowing us to dig out a particularly tough section of chalky soil in no time at all.

Best for: Digging holes

Another fearsome gardening tool which definitely needs to be treated with caution, Sneeboer’s transplanting trowel has razor-sharp edges which have been precision-sharpened to a degree rarely seen in the world of gardening tools. The pointed tip and knife-like edges will slice through soil and roots (and possibly fingers, too), making it ideal for transplanting seeds into less-than-perfect soil. The deep, trough-like shovel made it easy to scoop out large amounts of compost in one go, and the ultra-short bridge between the ash handle and shovel – the next best thing to single-piece construction – ensured maximum stability and control.

Best for: Tough soil

The first thought which came to mind when we saw this trowel was whether we need a license to own one. Hand-forged from a single piece of boron steel – boron being a naturally-occurring mineral sourced from the earth’s crust – DeWit’s 1kg trowel looks more like an exhibit we’d expect to see in an archaeological museum.

But it’s seriously tough, and has been designed to tackle unforgiving, rock-littered soil, while its pointed end is perfect for digging up weeds. The bevelled edges cut through a patch of turf like butter, and the tapered end allowed us to extract some daffodil bulbs with a surgical level of precision. It’s also one of the few trowels we’ve come across with a lifetime guarantee.

Best for: Heavy duty gardening work

A soil-slicing mean machine with a weirdly beautiful matte grey finish, the carbon steel hand trowel is the kind of garden tool you’ll want to hang from your garden shed’s most prominent peg. But don’t be afraid to use it, there’s little this trowel won’t handle – although a special shout-out should go to the ultra-solid construction and the smoothness of the shovel. As much as we love a marbled or roughened shovel, the smoothness makes it incredibly tactile (yes, we did just say that about a trowel).

It also reduced the amount of soil which stuck to the metal, even when we were digging our way through a particularly damp flower bed, moments after a thunderous downpour. The shovel end also has just the right amount of taper – it’s got enough of a point to serve as a useful weed-removing tool, without the unnecessary, worm-mutating sharpness increasingly seen on garden trowels.