This week, James Alexander-Sinclair and Joe Swift open the shed doors and ask the big question: do gardeners really need this many tools… or are we all just emotionally attached to rusty metal?

What follows is a gloriously unhinged inventory of spades, shovels, mattocks, mysterious iron bars, and at least five different types of string (James has a system, apparently).

We cover:

– The difference between a spade and a shovel (and why getting it wrong should get you gently escorted off a landscaping course)

– Golden spades, vintage forks, and the tool that’s been lost and rediscovered five times in a compost heap

– The great hoe crisis

– why none of us really knows how to use one properly

– Edward Shovelhands (yes, really)

– The rogue thistle-beheading device inherited from James’s grandfather– Why Japanese toolmakers don’t believe in long-handled edging shears

– The romance of linseed oil and cricket bats (unexpected crossover episode)

– Multi-tools, fruit pickers, ditch-rakes and the mythical lost mattock of 1994

– And the real answer to the question: should you declutter your shed?

No lectures. No rulebooks. Just two gardeners defending their tool addictions with confidence.

YOU too can put your questions to James and Joe in real time by subscribing to the Garden Collective for just £1. The next live episode is will be in January 2026 – don’t miss it!

Follow, rate and subscribe on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored by Kress, the global leaders in robotic lawn mowing.

Learn more here: https://www.kress.com/en-gb/ About our hosts

James Alexander-Sinclair is a garden designer, writer and broadcaster. He is an RHS Vice-President and was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal for outstanding contribution to horticulture in 2022. He is the RHS Ambassador for Garden Design and a Fellow of the Society of Garden Designers.

Joe Swift is a familiar face on television as a presenter of BBC TV’s Gardeners’ World and other gardening programmes. He is a garden designer, broadcaster, writer and design director of Modular.

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