Holly Shimizu Decided She Was Fed up with Buying Cheap Gardening Tools That Would Break

About 10 years ago, Holly Shimizu, director of the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C., decided she was fed up with buying cheap gardening tools that would break. She recalled her early days as a professional horticulturist working in England, at places like the Royal Horticultural Society's flagship garden, Wisley, and how good tools really mattered to English gardeners. There, "you don't go in and share the shovel," she says. So she scoured stores and gardening catalogs and bought the best tools she could find. She recalls spending about $300 on pruners, shovels and spades. But her favorite continues to be the Strapped Garden Fork by Clarington Forge, a British company that exports its handmade tools to the U.S. Its heft sets the fork apart, Ms. Shimizu says. "I have had forks that will break, like if you hit a big rock or try to lift it," she says. "That won't happen with this." A Clarington Forge spokeswoman says that's because the fork is forged from a single piece of steel. "There are no welded joints" as with most other garden forks, says Emma Kelly, managing director of the company's U.S. arm. The forks sells for $107. Ms. Shimizu uses the fork for everything from breaking up clay soil, to dividing perennials, to lifting weeds from their roots. She has owned her Clarington Forge fork for more than 20 years, and the wooden handle has darkened and molded to fit her hand perfectly. "A good tool becomes almost an extension of you. The older it gets, the more you love it," she says. The fork is available online at claringtonforge.com and at boutique garden centers such as the Seed Bank in Petaluma, Calif., and Fifth Season Gardening Co., a chain of organic garden centers in North Carolina. Source: wsj.com