Buying gifts for gardeners sounds easy until you actually start thinking about it and looking.
There are endless lists recommending gardening mugs, decorative signs, random seed packets and every garden tool imaginable. But if you’re buying for someone who gardens regularly, there’s a good chance they already have most of the basics, and they can be pretty particular about the things they use – I know we are.
So instead of giving you a huge list, I’m keeping this one small, but efficient.
These are gifts we actually use around our own homestead and would genuinely recommend giving to another gardener – because they actually work. Some are inexpensive, some are bigger gifts, and a few aren’t even technically gardening products, but that’s what makes them good.
I’m also including two seemingly obvious gardening gifts that I would never recommend buying without asking the gardener first.
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6 Gifts for Gardeners We Actually Recommend
1. Soil Blocker and a Large Storage Tote
Good for: Gardeners who start plants from seed
Price range: $$
Links: soil blocker & Large 12 Gallon Plastic Container for Soil Blocking
If the gardener you’re buying for starts their own seeds, a soil blocker is one of my favourite gifts on this list. Since we discovered this, we haven’t done it any other way since.
We use soil blocks for starting our seedlings instead of relying entirely on traditional plastic seed-starting cells. A soil blocker compresses damp seed-starting mix into individual blocks that you can sow directly into.
You might have seen this before on another site, but here’s the part they don’t tell you about that I’d include with the gift: large 12 gallon plastic container.
We use a large tote to mix and hold the soil while making the blocks. It gives you enough room to add water, mix everything together and press the blocker while trying to keep it all contained.
Put the blocker inside the tote, wrap the whole thing together, and you’ve got a genuinely useful seed-starting gift rather than another decorative gardening accessory.
Want to see how we use ours? Read our complete guide to Soil Blocking for Seed Starting: Why It’s Better for You and Your Plants
Link to: SOIL BLOCKER
Link to: Large 12 Gallon Plastic Container for Soil Blocking
2. A Photo Storage Case for Organizing Seeds
Good for: Seed starters and seed savers
Price range: $
This isn’t technically a gardening product at all, but it’s practical – and that’s why it works.
Those plastic photo storage cases that contain a bunch of smaller individual cases make excellent seed organizers.
Seed packets have a way of accumulating quickly. Instead of keeping them loose in a box, drawer, or bag – the individual photo cases let you organize them into categories such as tomatoes, peppers, herbs, flowers or whatever system makes sense for your garden.
You can also label the individual cases so everything is easy to find when seed-starting season arrives.
If you’re buying for someone who saves their own seeds or has a growing seed collection, this is one of those gifts they may never think to buy for themselves but can use for years.
Link to: Photo Storage Case
3. A Dehydrator
Good for: Gardeners who grow food or herbs or who like to preserve their harvest
Price range: $$$
This is one of the bigger gifts on the list, but it’s also one of the most-used pieces of preserving equipment in our house during harvest season and sometimes throughout the entire year.
We use our dehydrator for everything from apple chips to herbs to jerky.
For someone who grows their own food, a dehydrator gives them another way to actually use and preserve what they’ve spent months growing. It’s particularly useful when the garden suddenly starts producing faster than you can eat everything.
It isn’t exclusively for vegetable gardeners either. Someone with a large herb garden can use it for drying oregano, thyme, dill and other culinary herbs.
If you’re shopping for a gardener who is also interested in preserving their harvest, this would be high on my list.
You can see ours in action in our guides to how to make apple chips, how to dry oregano, how to dry thyme, drying dill with a dehydrator and how to dry rosemary.
Link to: DEHYDRATOR
4. Electric Fencing for the Garden
Good for: Gardeners dealing with persistent animal pressure
Price range: $$$
This one will look a little wonky under the tree, but for the right gardener, Electric fencing could be one of the best gifts you could give them.
After spending months starting seeds, planting, watering and tending a garden, there’s nothing quite like discovering that an animal has helped itself to the harvest.
Electric fencing is obviously a much larger and more practical gift than a pair of gloves or a packet of seeds, so I wouldn’t buy it blindly. You need to know the size of the garden, what animals they’re dealing with and what kind of setup makes sense.
But if you’re buying for your spouse or another gardener whose setup you know well, helping them finally solve an ongoing pest problem is a gift they’ll appreciate every time they walk into the garden.
Link to: Electric fence kit
5. A Small Harvest Basket for the Young Children
Good for: Gardening families with young children
Price range: $
Not every gardening gift has to be for the gardener themselves.
If you’re buying for someone who gardens with young children, give the kids their own small harvest basket.
Our children like being involved in the garden, and having something that’s actually their size gives them a job to do when we’re picking vegetables, herbs or fruit. It’s a well used and loved gift.
I much prefer this to buying children plastic gardening toys they’ll quickly outgrow. A small, functional basket lets them participate in what everyone else is doing.
And when it isn’t being used in the garden, it can hold toys, nature finds or whatever else they’ve collected that day. The imagination of a child is unmatched.
Link to: small harvest basket
6. Homemade Vanilla and Water Mosquito Spray
Good for: Anyone who spends summer mornings or evenings outside
Price range: $
This is easily the least expensive gift on the list, and you can make it yourself in 30 seconds.
We use a simple pure vanilla extract and water spray to help keep mosquitoes away while we’re outside. It’s especially useful during those summer evenings when you’re trying to finish watering or harvesting and the mosquitoes suddenly come out.
Make a batch, put it into a small spray bottle and add a label.
You could give it on its own as a small gardening gift or tuck it into a larger garden gift basket.
See exactly how we make our 2 Ingredient Mosquito Repellent here.
Two Basic Gardening Gifts That Are Still Worth Buying
Not every gift needs to be unusual. There are two basic gardening supplies I wouldn’t hesitate to give because gardeners actually wear them out.
Gardening Gloves
A good pair of gardening gloves isn’t exciting, but that’s okay.
Gloves get wet, muddy, ripped and eventually disappear. If you know what size the gardener wears and the general style they prefer, another good-quality pair is useful.
This is also an easy smaller gift or stocking stuffer.
Pruning Shears
The same goes for a good pair of garden pruners.
Gardeners use them constantly for harvesting herbs, pruning plants, cutting flowers and general garden maintenance. If you know the gardener is working with an old or inexpensive pair, upgrading them can be a worthwhile gift.
I wouldn’t get overly specialized here. A good general-purpose pair is enough unless you know exactly what they’re looking for.
Link to: Garden Pruners & Gardening Gloves
2 Gardening Gifts I Would Never Buy Without Asking
Some of the most obvious gifts for gardeners are actually the ones I’d be most hesitant to buy or recommend to anyone who isn’t doing their own research.
1. Grow Lights
If someone starts their own seeds, a grow light sounds like the perfect gift.
But don’t guess what they want.
Grow lights need to work with the gardener’s existing seed-starting setup. They may need a particular length for their shelving, a certain output, a specific way of hanging them or simply want to stick with the lights they’re already using.
If they’ve specifically told you which grow light they want, that’s different. Otherwise, I’d ask first or contribute toward the exact setup they have in mind.
A surprise grow light that doesn’t fit their shelves isn’t much of a gift.
2. Seeds
This might be the most controversial one on the list.
A gardener likes growing plants, so buying them seeds seems obvious.
But experienced gardeners often have very specific ideas about what they want to grow.
They may be choosing varieties based on their climate, growing season, available space, disease resistance, allergies, flavour or what their family actually eats. They may already have all the seeds they need, and some gardeners save their own seeds from year to year.
So unless you know that there’s a particular variety they’ve been wanting, I wouldn’t randomly choose seeds for them.
A gift card to a seed company they already order from is a much safer choice.
Looking for a Homemade Gift Instead?
If the gardener you’re shopping for is also someone who loves using what they grow, you don’t necessarily need to buy them another gardening tool. We make a lot of our Christmas gifts right in our own kitchen using ingredients we’ve grown or preserved from the garden.
From homemade herbal tea bags and dried herbs to apple chips, basil salt and other edible gifts, these can be especially nice for the gardener who already seems to own everything.
See all of our Homemade Food Gifts: Easy Christmas Gifts From Our Garden & Kitchen
What Makes a Good Gift for a Gardener?
The best gifts for gardeners don’t necessarily have the word garden printed on the package.
Some of the most useful things we own weren’t designed to be cute gardening gifts at all. A photo storage case keeps our seeds organized. A large storage tote makes soil blocking easier. A dehydrator helps us deal with the harvest after the growing is finished.
That’s what I’d think about when buying for a gardener: what problem can you make a little easier?
And if you aren’t sure what they need, ask.
I’d much rather know what’s under the wrapping paper and receive something I’ll use for years than be surprised by another packet of seeds I don’t have room to plant.
If you’re interested in homesteading, you can explore all of our hands-on advice in our Homesteading Basics Page, based on what actually works here on our homestead.
We are growing our website with more articles all the time, and we invite you to grow with us. If you have any questions about gifts for gardeners or would like to share some of your knowledge with us please leave a comment below. Happy Gardening!
