![A pair of large pots create an inviting entrance at Jayne and Simon Beverly's garden The Glen, Clear Creek. A pair of large pots create an inviting entrance at Jayne and Simon Beverly's garden The Glen, Clear Creek.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/37uSWs3eyNM24fqefKJaatC/fcc44ead-f8d3-4c0f-9484-629beb80efa3.jpg/r0_0_3000_2250_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Christmas shopping is almost painless for gardeners. If you're looking for a gift for a gardening lover anything goes, from a packet of plant labels to shiny new secateurs to a pair of lovely large glazed urns to adorn an entrance gate or patio steps.
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For non-gardeners, it's a perfect opportunity to spread the word and convert them to your passion.
Pots make great presents and garden centres carry a vast choice in every price range, in every imaginable material from concrete to knacky distressed terracotta.
Large pots are beautiful whether empty or planted with something simple, like bay or box. Or, find a small pot and fill it yourself, there's no nicer present.
You need at least three different plants to make an impact. Choose contrasting leaves in similar shades of green, grey or glaucous: spiky, lacey and rounded or oval. Or, use different shaped plants: upright, bushy and cascading.
Interesting spikey leaves include variegated Dietes grandiflora 'Banana Split' and Phormiums in the Maori range: Maori Queen, Maori Chief, Maori Maiden in shades of green, bronze and red.
Grasses are good in pots too: poas, lomandras and straw-coloured Carex buchananii are all tough and hardy.
Perennial statice (Limonium perezzii) has large, rounded leaves and sprays of purple and white flowers. Bergenia cordifolia has glossy leaves with flowers in several colours.
Large pots are beautiful whether empty or planted with something simple, like bay or box. Or, find a small pot and fill it yourself, there's no nicer present.
- Fiona Ogilvie
Trailers include Dichondra repens Silver Falls with silver foliage, Sedum spurium Chocolate Blob ditto greenish-purple and Lamium Orchid Frost with prettily variegated leaves and lilac flowers.
A potted Christmas tree is another variation on the pot theme. I recently spotted a West Australian Woollybush (Adenanthos sericeus) clipped into a neat, Christmas tree-shaped cone. A medium to large shrub (to five metres), Woollybush has soft, grey-green, downy foliage and unobtrusive red flowers. It thrives in dry summers and is hardy to -4 degrees.
Large sizes retail for about $69.95 or, buy a smaller one (or three) and clip in time for next Christmas
No gardener can ever say no to gardening gloves and we need several kinds depending on tasks at hand. A tough suede/denim combo is good for heavy, muddy planting. Lightweight washable with waterproof nitrile palms and polyester uppers are better for fiddly seedlings and cuttings.
A few years ago, I won a pack of 10 pairs of Craftright polyester/nitrile gloves in a raffle and I'm still only on my third pair. At $9.98 they make a handy stocking filler.
Rose pruning needs thick, tough gloves like Hortex Rugged Rigger leather ($9.98). Infuriatingly, garden centres often only carry large sizes, as if pruning roses were the exclusive preserve of the alpha male of the establishment. I've given up asking them to stock medium and small, I might as well address a brick wall.
Lastly, you're never too young to start gardening. Hortex do a lovely children's range, Mini Grubs in flowery printed cotton ($2.40, $4.40) and Grubs Children's Handi Mate ($3.75).