Smith Hawken: The Tool Book: A Compendium of Over 500 Tools for the Well-Tended Garden

The Garden Writers Association of America declared it best book of the year for 1998. And The New York Times wrote: "Logan, who is one of our best garden writers, has produced not only a real book but a scrupulously researched, handsomely designed, and highly enjoyable one to book."The Took Book celebrates garden tools in all their pleasure, practicality, variety, beauty, ingenuity, simplicity, and purity. Thirteen chapters and over 70 striking full-color photographic spreads-obsessive and obsessively informative-present hundreds of tools organized by task: 22 shovels, 21 spades, 12 trowels, 16 hoes, 11 weeders, 19 hand pruners, 10 pruning saws. In addition to garden tool necessities, here are knives, axes, hooks, watering cans, rakes, riddles, brooms, wheel barrows, shears, and scoops, and much more. There are tools to start the garden from seed in the spring, tools to keep it growing and healthy all summer, and tools clean up in the fall. And, finally, tools to care for the tools.

In addition, the the book presents a detailed overview of the marriage of tool to type of work-how garden tools evolved, how to use each type of tool properly, and what to look for in a tool. It's the right tool for the right job. 37,000 copies in print.

William Bryant Logan is a certified arborist who uses a variety of garden tools in his daily work. He is also a Quill & Trowel Award-winning writer, contributing editor to Garden Design, and a free-lance author whose articles have appeared in House Beautiful, Horticulture, House & Garden, and Metropolitan Home. He previously wrote "Cuttings," a column for The New York Times. Mr. Logan lives and gardens in Brooklyn, New York.