If you don't know your dibber from your trowel or the correct way to use a hoe, here is our guide to the top 10 essential tools for the novice gardener.

By Elspeth Pridham

A good fork is a must, essential for breaking up the earth whether you are mixing compost into your vegetable patch or creating a new flowerbed. Test the feel of the fork in the shop before you buy so you get the right weight and height for you. Garden forks can cost anything from £15 to £70 and to a certain extent you get what you pay for, but if you don't plan to do much heavy digging you won't need one of the more expensive, durable designs.

It would be impossible to dig over a bed or plant shrubs or trees without a spade. As with the fork, test the weight and height before you buy to get the right size for you. Some of the more sturdy designs might suit burly builders but can prove unwieldy for the average 5'5" female. Look out for easy-grip handles, carbon steel or stainless steel rustproof heads and a strong hardwood shaft securely riveted into the head.

Use a hoe as a surface tool, between flowers in beds or rows of vegetables, to uproot weeds. But take care not to get too carried away - you risk enthusiastically chopping down young plants and seedlings along with the dandelions.

Not just for giving children a free ride round the garden, a wheelbarrow will save you endless trudging backwards and forwards carrying plants to their designated spot or weeds to the compost bin. Available in a variety of sizes, you can choose from heavy-duty steel or lightweight plastic. Where storage is a problem, Greenfingers sells a steel and fabric folding barrow.

Unless you particularly want to transform your lily-whites into gnarled gardening hands, invest in a couple of pairs of gloves. You can pick up pretty fabric, light-duty gloves from the supermarket, but for more vigorous chores consider a durable material such as suede. Plantmenow's extensive range covers everything from thermal to thorn-resistant gauntlets

Always carry a good sharp pair of secateurs to trim back stray fronds, deadhead the roses or cut blooms for the house. Just walking about with these in your hand will make you look like an established gardener. For more robust pruning you will need a pair of loppers. This long-handled, sharp-bladed tool is designed to cut through small branches or thick woody stems.

A trowel is a mini spade - particularly useful when planting bulbs or tackling your tubs and hanging baskets. As with all tools, you get what you pay for. The cheap and cheerful coloured trowels sold as gardening gifts look pretty but may only last a season. To avoid your trowel bending and breaking as you bed in the begonias look for a rigid metal head that's tightly bonded to an easy-grip handle.

Use your rake to till the soil prior to planting seeds, to gather up autumn leaves or to scarify the lawn in spring. Do not use this tool to give yourself a sudden and unpleasant smack in the face. This can be avoided by always laying the rake down with the teeth safely facing into the ground.

This is one of the few tools you can make yourself satisfactorily as it is basically a pointed stick used for making drill holes for seeds or young plants. A serviceable dibber can be fashioned out of the wooden handles that snapped off your cheap trowel, spade or fork before you invested in a decent set.

Every good gardener carries a ball of string in their pocket (along with a few loose seeds, fluff-covered sweets and an interestingly shaped pebble). As you wander round your flourishing garden you will always find plants that need tying up or roping back. Team your string with a sharp penknife and you're in business.