You may want to forward this list to your friends and significant others, or anybody who might possibly think these would be good gift choices for you. (Pssst, you there! Your gardening friend wants a GIFT CARD FOR HER FAVORITE NURSERY! Not any of the terrible, embarrassing gift items shown here!)
#1. THE SNAIL-RIDING FAIRY CERAMIC KEEPSAKE. I’ll put this in the “Gifts-From-Your-Clueless-but-Well-Meaning-Grandma” genre because she is the only possible person who would buy you this. If you recieve this from Grandma as a gift, you can store it in the closet, but you’ll have to get it out every time she visits, because she WILL ask you where it is. She won’t remember the names of her grandchildren but she’ll remember she gave you this horrible ceramic doo-dad.
#2 GARDEN BON-BONS — BOX OF DELICIOUS-LOOKING CHOCOLATES THAT ARE ACTUALLY SEED BLOBS
Yeah, so instead of being able to eat rich, creamy chocolates NOW, you get to eat a spray of parsley IN SEVEN MONTHS.
#3 STRAP-ON AERATING SANDALS
First of all, they don’t really work. To properly aerate the soil, you need to pull little plugs of soil out, not just ram spikes down into the ground. Second, so what if they DID work, they are RIDICULOUS! Third, if you’re packing your suitcase in a hurry, you might mistake them for your Tevas and be stuck wearing them all week on your beach vacation!
#4 DESKTOP ZEN GARDEN
“See here, Flanagan, we’ve lost the big Jones account. Seems those reports you sent over last month were filled with SAND. What gives?”
#5 FLOWERY FORK AND TROWEL SET
Another one for the Granny genre. I guess by using these I’ll seem more cute and girly as I garden. I’ll be out there sweating in the sun, squishing grubs with my bare fingers and cussing at the rock-solid clay I’m trying to dig through, but my pink and blue floral trowel will make me look sweet and feminine anyway.
#6 TINY LI’L EGG PLANTERS
I don’t know….I’m just not feeling this one. Supposedly, you can grow herbs in these on your windowsill and it will be incredibly charming. If you caught me on a different day I might think these were cute, but today I think they’re pointless and lame.
#7 SASQUATCH LAWN FIGURINE
Ladies, if your husband is at all like mine, there is a good chance that he will eventually buy you this. If you have South Park figurines, a Dwight Schrute bobblehead, or any Family Guy paraphernalia on your mantel, those are the early warning signs!!
#8 FLOWERPOT PEOPLE
I get shivers just looking at these. Take a close look at the faces on these things…are they smiling? Yes, smiles of cunning and malice! I’ll bet if you broke one of these and threw it in the garbage, the next day it would be sitting right back in your garden, all whole again, smiling that creepy smile…
#9. THE LAWN-STRYPER
For the man in your life who wants his front lawn to look like a baseball stadium, here’s a gizmo he can attach to the back of his mower to make striped grass. The actual ad copy goes like this:
“Neighbors asking about your lawn? Keep them guessing! The Check-Mate lawn-striper can be our little secret.”
And his weekly therapy session for OCD will our little secret.
Incidentally, you can also use the Lawn Stryper to spell out “I’m a weenie” in your front yard.
#10 The Postcarden – Pop Up Postcard Garden
This product brings two really dull gift ideas together into one super-lame combo.
Wait a minute, is it a postcard or is it a tiny blob of watercress??? Oh my God, it’s both!!!
Well, that’s all for now! I’m sure if your loved ones put their minds to it, they could find hundreds more lame gardening gift ideas for you, but I only have time to showcase these ten. So happy holidays everybody and let’s all keep our fingers crossed for the gift card!!!
Black Walnut Dispatch 
Love this…so much!
Enjoying reading your blogs. Have to say… the Sasquatch looks like something my husband or brother would like!
Mine, too ,Sophie! Thanks for checking out my blog :o)
What a great article! So right on!
I’ll bet if you wore those sandals to the beach everyone would give you plenty of room. You’d be the lady with the lethal footwear.
Vicky, they’d give you lots of traction on the sand.
What a useful list, and perfectly hilarious with your comments. I have felt exactly the same way as you do about #7 when I see those creepy eyes and ears for attaching to tree trunks…you know you’ve seen them.
It’s incredible that any of these exist at all, much less that someone, somewhere, buys them and uses them. I am somewhat chagrined that I actually have a pair of aerating sandals. I nearly broke my ankles the first time I tried to use them. Horticultural knowledge and social satire! Well done, Mary G!
Oh my goodness, I can just pictures those spikes sinking into the ground and then if you lost your balance — crack! — ack! I don’t even like to think about it!
Wait until you hit a rock or buried chunk of concrete with them. (I admit that I use mine from time to time, but I also live right in the middle of North Texas, where our local Black Prairie clay is about four feet deep. Taking out plugs simply isn’t an option because the plugs clog any tool trying to do so, and it needs relatively gentle massaging to get things soft enough to let the worms get to work. Even so, I always have a spotter watching for me if in case I go down, and I ALWAYS have a chair in the middle of the lawn so I can put them on and take them off without breaking an ankle.)
Oh, don’t even get me started. (I have to admit that I use my aerating sandals, but that’s mostly to help keep the June bug grub population in my front yard under control. They’re worthless as standard aerators, but a few weeks of regular stomping, and the grubs are gone.) My personal aggravations are those DuneCraft garden sets available at Hobby Lobby, particularly the “Carnivorous Creations” one. It’s bad enough that it’s pretty much a worthless kit, and that anybody that can get any of the seeds to germinate deserves a medal. The only thing worse than having to explain to kids who received one for Christmas that they’ll never see the huge collection of carnivorous plants on the box top is getting them sent to me because “you like carnivorous plants, right?”
I had no idea that those spiky sandals would kill grubs, but I guess it makes sense — do they just pierce right through them? Ew! I’ve also never heard of the Dune Craft hobby kits….I have to admit, they sound kind of cool, but after reading your comments I’ll be sure never to get suckered into buying one.
Here’s a thumbnail summary of the Carnivorous Creations kits I put together a couple of years back: http://txtriffidranch.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/observations-well-bless-your-heart-the-carnivorous-creations-story/ As with your suggestions, these aren’t bought by people who know anything about carnivores so much as by well-meaning relatives who figure “How hard can it be?”
This is awesome, shared a link to this article from my blog!
LOL What truly horrible gifts, except the egg planters and pot people, which I don’t think are so bad. Fairy riding a snail? Just gross!
Priceless, just priceless. You put a big smile on my (muddy) face. Though the baseball-lawn thingy is kind of cool. Not that I have a lawn…
As a skeptic living in the PNW, I’d actually *like* the sasquatch, just to play with people’s minds.
Heidi, I agree the sasquatch has a certain appeal…it would be kind of cool to have him poking out from behind a tree in a woodland garden or something.
Thanks for the amusing lineup. I must observe that in my household, I’m far more likely to be on the receiving end for garden gifts, so many of these will never (fingers crossed) apply to me. At the same time, I offer that there are days when my wife would far prefer to see the Sasquatch statuary in my garden rather than the sorry form I present.
Look – if u wanna get me a pressie, I’ll go the garden bon-bons. I read a couple of books by Fukuoka (Natural Farming and ?I forgot the other one) and he mentioned revegetating degraded lands and deserts by getting the military planes to drop pelleted tree seeds. (not parsley!) These could do the trick.
Thanks, John. Where are you from? “Pressie” sounds very British, or perhaps Australian?
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