The Best Gardening Tools and Yard Equipment of 2024

A quality shovel, as with a sturdy garden hoe, is one of the best gardening tools to invest in, and one of the most basic. The best garden shovel that we’ve tested, the Hooyman Digging Shovel features a heavy-duty carbon steel head and no-slip grips for each hand. The slightly serrated blade cuts through everything from hard ground to roots. The lightweight fiberglass shaft is durable but light enough for long stretches of use.

Not all jobs require a full-sized shovel, however. If you want to dig small holes planting seeds, consider a hand trowel, such as the Fiskars Ergo Trowel.

The Flexzilla hose, our favorite garden hose, is a crucial garden tool to keep in the shed. It’s light and flexible without sacrificing durability or performance. Both ends of the Flexzilla have comfort grips that allow the hose to twist freely, making it easy to maneuver around the yard.

The Flexzilla’s titular flexibility did lead to a couple of kinks as we pulled the hose taut, but it un-kinked itself after a moment, so it wasn’t an issue during testing. The flexible nature of this hose also made it a breeze to coil and carry from one place to another. It can’t touch the portability of an expandable hose, but it was the easiest to move, coiled or expanded, of the standard hoses we tested.

The Dramm 12424 One-Touch Shower and Stream is simple, elegant, effective, and high-quality. As the name suggests, the dial’s only two options are shower and stream. The fx5low is controlled by an easy-to-adjust rear thumb throttle. Between those two settings, the best hose nozzle we’ve tested can perform most garden and yard tasks besides misting.

The only drawback to this otherwise-perfect spray is that its watering radius on “shower” is small compared to other models, making it less useful for big yards. Still, it’s a gardening tool that will make watering far more controlled.

Our testing of the Felco 2 pruning shears backs up the brand’s reputation for making quality gardening tools. Our pick as best pruning shears, these excellent garden tools have hardened steel blades that cut cleanly through every plant you’re likely to encounter in your garden, from delicate flower stems to half-inch diameter branches. That versatility is a huge advantage with gardening hand tools. You can cut down the last year’s growth on your yew hedge, trim your roses, give them a quick clean, and then snip a few basil leaves to pretty up your plate of spaghetti.

Although the manufacturer says the F-2s have a one-inch cutting capacity, in practice, that “capacity” depends on your hand strength. If you’re a weekend gardener who doesn’t spend a lot of time working with yard tools, you might not be able to cut through a one-inch branch even though the shears can open wide enough.

When cutting softer plant materials like raspberry canes, the action can feel a little sticky, as though the mechanism is getting slightly stuck. The cuts are still clean. The lock is easy to close with your thumb but can be hard to reopen one-handed.

No home’s chest of gardening tools would be complete without a pair of sturdy gloves. StoneBreaker Gardener Gloves are excellent all-around gloves for most light to medium-duty gardening and yard work. The available sizes—small, medium, and large—roughly correspond to glove sizes 7-9.

At about $20 a pair, the StoneBreaker Gloves aren’t cheap, but they’re ruggedly durable. They’re a great all-purpose pair for anyone who wants just one set of gloves. Made of goatskin and fabric, they’re sensitive enough for weeding, but sturdy enough for grabbing thorny stems and rough-edged bricks. They’ll also keep blisters at bay during long pruning sessions.

The slim profile of the fingertip seams keeps them from interfering with fine-detail work. The light color and breathable fabric backing help them stay cool on hot, sunny days, and the palms are water-resistant.

There are a few downsides: the backs of these gloves aren’t water-resistant, they’re on the pricey side, and they must be washed by hand. The cuff is long, but the elastic isn’t particularly tight, so some dirt may fall in.

See more of the best gardening gloves we tested and reviewed.

Psst. There’s a new class of motorized garden tools on the block: the electric mower.

Say goodbye to the familiar and annoying noise that goes with mowing the lawn. You’ll love the quiet of the Ego Power+, the best lawn mower that we’ve ever tested. No longer will you need to feel bad about waking neighbors if you’re mowing early on Saturdays.

This 21-inch electric mower is easy to start—just press the power button, pull the green handle, and the blades begin to spin. The mower’s 56-volt lithium-ion battery lasts 60 minutes and charges in 50 minutes.

This lawn mower’s self-propulsion was powerful enough to go up hills during testing, and the motor produces enough torque that the Power+ can compete with gas-powered mowers. It also features twin blades, which makes mulching more efficient.

The Mammotion’s Luba 2 packs many high-tech features into an effective racecar-shaped robot system. The best robot mower you can buy, it wirelessly communicates with its charging station and follows customizable protocols from the app, which can be adjusted in granular detail.

The Luba 2’s app allows you to tweak the robot’s schedules, and employ some of its more advanced skills like its first-person view camera, which ports you right into the lens of the robot. It will also help you set precise borders to mow zones and mow in patterns

Those who are excited about customization options and innovative smart features could find the many technological marvels of this robot lawn mower more than worth it. If you’re concerned about letting a robot navigate between the ivy beds and detail the flower beds by the steps, this is the one in which to put your trust.

This tornado of a leaf blower claims it can move 600 cubic feet of air per minute. Based on our testing, that’s easy to believe. Our favorite leaf blower, the Worx WG520 was unmatched in clearing leaves off any surface from a distance, including wet, matted leaves that had glued themselves to the pavement.

To avoid blowing all your potted plants off the porch, the Worx WG520 has a speed dial to adjust its air blasts from its hurricane-pounding maximum to normal leaf-blower levels. For about $60, this is an effective, powerful machine. It’s light enough to carry easily at 7.2 pounds, and aesthetically, it looks less like a radioactive “Fortnite” gun than any other blower we tested.

The Worx’s one downfall is that it’s loud for a corded pick, spewing up to 82 dB at its highest speed. The noise is higher-pitched than landscapers’ gasoline-powered blowers and less annoying at a distance. Still, this garden tool calls for ear protection.

String trimmers are motorized gardening tools that greatly help with manicuring your yard. The Kobalt 80-volt string trimmer packs the power of a gas-powered weed wacker without all the noise. During testing, it easily handled grass, vines, small saplings, and even bamboo.

Weighing just over 11 pounds, this electric string trimmer is maneuverable and well-balanced although it’s large. If you need a weed wacker for tighter spaces, though, you might want to go for a smaller string trimmer that we tested.

If you’ve ever thought about composting, this trapezoid-shaped outdoor bin is the best compost bin we’ve tested. Indoor bins have a temperature advantage that can help your composting, but if you want a traditional option (or just don’t want compost inside your home), the Redmon composter is a great choice to add to your garden tools.

The bin’s opening is wide enough to shovel in leaves or leftover garden plants easily. The sides have plenty of holes for ventilation, but they aren’t fully open. They let in air and moisture and cut down on the smell, but they keep animals out.

During testing, we did run into an issue with mice digging under the side of the bin to get to food scraps. However, we addressed it by pushing the “teeth” of the bin further into the ground and placing large rocks around the edge to keep them out.

The True Temper wheelbarrow is useful anytime you want to carry something heavy, bulky, or awkward through your yard. Our favorite wheelbarrow, it can travel over most yard obstacles and steps, and it holds more than 3 cubic feet of mulch flat (or up to 6 cubic feet mounded) in the spacious tray.

Its best feature is how easy this wheelbarrow is to control. Even when fully loaded with bricks, the True Temper never felt like it was falling or “running away” downhill. The single flat-free rubber tire is sturdy but soft enough that it easily rolls over rough ground, rocks, and branches. The single-wheel construction allows it to pivot around a 1-foot diameter turn.

On the other hand, this wheelbarrow is large and weighs almost 46 pounds. It can be stored standing on its nose end, but it still takes up a lot of space. Reviews say this wheelbarrow is easy to assemble, so you can grab your tool set and be hauling dirt in no time.

If you are still concerned about tipping, garden carts might be better yard tools for your needs. You’ll still be able to transport plants, tools, and yard debris, but the extra wheels add stability.

While they’re not traditional gardening tools like wheelbarrows and shovels, modern smart sprinklers enhance your garden and save water. The second-generation Rachio 3 Smart Sprinkler Controller currently tops our list of the best smart sprinklers for its abundant, easy-to-use options and straightforward installation.

The model we tested offers control over eight zones (sometimes called "stations"), though there's an additional model that supports up to twice that. Smart home junkies will appreciate the integrations with Nest, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple HomeKit. There's even a host of IFTTT recipes available to customize your sprinkler even further.

The Rachio 3 isn’t the most affordable smart irrigation controller, but it does offer the most features while still being easy enough for anyone to use. Serious gardening hobbyists will like the Rachio 3 for its fine-tuned smart scheduling and robust automation abilities.

The Truper Tru Tough combines all the qualities that the best rakes offer into one rake. It’s light enough that it’s easy to maneuver, but heavy enough to hug the ground as you drag the rake toward you.

The metal tines and substantial weight make this yard tool so efficient that one sweep is usually all it will take. It works well both on harder ground and on slightly longer grass.

While more expensive than many other rakes, it emerged as a consistent favorite in our testing. It didn’t always sweep up every acorn or pine needle, but the long handle and cushioned end make it manageable to hold for longer periods of raking.

It’s not the widest rake we tested, but the loss of horizontal coverage is made up for in maneuverability, raking efficiency, and ease of storage.