Emily Hannah have a huge range of funky wellies

THE festive season is nearly here and it's the perfect time for gardeners to reflect on the year gone by. For the organic gardener like any other it's also time to start looking ahead and thinking about how to improve your garden in the New Year.

Successful organic gardening requires some careful thought to keep ahead of pests and diseases with cultural controls and resistant varieties, and create a thriving, productive kitchen garden with well-timed successional sowing and crop rotation. All this planning always has me putting together a rather extravagant wish list of all those things that would add a little extra pleasure to various garden chores throughout the year or help develop new plans for the vegetable plot.

I know what I'd like, but choosing the perfect Christmas gift is not always easy, so rather than bore you with my extensive wish list I've asked twenty organic gardeners, friends and colleagues, amateurs and professionals what they would most like to find in their stocking! The gifts below are those they have given or received with glee, some tried and tested old favourites, plus some they are planning to add to their Christmas lists this year. There is everything from the luxurious to the pragmatic and I hope this provides some useful inspiration - and helps put a smile on the face of a gardener you know this Christmas.

Here's the verdict!

Little luxuries:

Hard-working gardener's hands need plenty of TLC, especially during the winter months. Crabtree and Evelyn's Gardeners hand therapy cream comes highly recommended indeed and is available in a handbag size (50ml, £5.50) or as a convenient hand-pump dispenser, great for the kitchen, bathroom or potting shed (250ml, £15.50). www.crabtree-evelyn.co.uk Tel: 01443 445566.

Love them or loath them everyone knows someone who gets a giggle out of a garden gnome. Based in Hampshire, Gnomeland has extensive collection of ceramic gnomes for £10-£20 with everything from the traditional to the unusual to the downright rude! www.gnomeland.co.uk Tel: 01590 622007.

Save the carpets during the muddy months with a boot brush. Not an obvious gift but useful and with some quirky ones available they can make a stylish present. Cast in style make a number of decorative but sturdy cast iron boot brushes from around £15 to £30. Their snail boot brush is a personal favourite! www.castinstyle.co.uk Orderline 01902 455700.

Give your gardening buddies happy feet with a colourful pair of wellies. These have put a smile on the face of a gardener I know every time she looks down, which makes the weeding a little less daunting apparently! Welly clogs are also great for slipping on to pop out to the compost bin etc. Emily Hannah have a huge range of wellies and welly clogs to choose from for men, women and kids from around £20-£30 www.funky-wellington-boots.co.uk Tel: 0208 123 8042 One gardener friend of mine swears by her snood, wearing it somewhere about her person on all but the hottest days! It makes a great hat, a cosy scarf, ear muffs or a headband to keep hair out of your eyes while sowing seeds. Berghaus have a unisex Power Stretch Neck Gaiter with a draw string that can be used as a hat, scarf or headband. Available from www.outdoorclothing.co.uk for £11.99.

Now, thinking ahead to the summer months, no gardener should be without a good sun hat. This idea comes from a friend who was feeling the glare a little while pruning in the orchard, so this will definitely be on his wish list! Hen and Hammock have an elegant, crocheted Fair-trade sun hat, handmade by a women's co-operative in Ecuador (£24) www.henandhammock.co.uk Tel: 01844 217060 or Millet's have a lightweight, breathable and easily packable men's sun hat in their Peter Storm collection for £12.99. www.millets.co.uk Tel: 0800 389 5861.

The tool for the job:

A good pair of secateurs can be indispensable. Felco secateurs are the favourite gardening companion of most gardeners I know. Models no. 4 and 5 would make a great gift (£20-£30) www.worldoffelco.co.uk Tel: 0845 241 7413 Copper tape produces a small electric field that repels slugs and snails, which are further deterred by the toothed edge of the Snail and Slug tape. This self-adhesive tape from the Centre for Alternative Technology would stock up the arsenal of any slug-busters you know. (4m x 2.5cm for £5.95 or 5m x 3cm for £9.99) www.cat.org.uk Tel: 01654 705993 Trugs have a multiplicity of uses around the garden. The Organic Gardening Catalogue has a virtually indestructible recycled polythene trug, ideal for wet and dry jobs from compost mixing to pond clearing. A medium (40l) trug is £9.45. www.organiccatalog.com Tel: 0845 130 1304 As well as encouraging wildlife in to your garden, bird feeders attract bug-gobbling birds that help the organic gardener with pest control. Eco centric have an unusual bird feeder mobile (£29) www.ecocentric.co.uk Tel: 020 7739 3888.

Attracting beneficial insects in to the garden gives the organic gardener a whole squadron of helpers in the fight against pests. The Organic Gardening Catalogue has some great ideas including ladybird feeders (£5.90) which would be great fun for kids or a bug hotel (£14.75) www.organiccatalog.com Tel: 0845 130 1304 A good pruning saw can be invaluable especially to those with an orchard. Try Silky saws for a top of the range saw from between £25 and £35 depending on size. Abacus arboricultural suppliers stock many models. www.abacus-ise.co.uk Tel: 01473 232678.

A quality gardening spade or fork should make the hard work of digging easier for life, something any gardener would appreciate. Spear and Jackson have a range for all uses (www.grovelands.com Tel: 0844 840 8401), as do Wilkinson Sword (www.worldofwilkinsonsword.co.uk Tel: 0845 241 7413). A good spade or fork will generally be £20-£35.

Seeds of promise:

Whether a devotee of biodynamics or just curious, you may know someone who'd love an organic gardening calendar that shows the phases of the moon and the best planting times for different crops. Lunar Organics has a beautifully-illustrated 2008 calendar with a lunar gardening guide included (£9.95). www.lunarorganics.com Tel: 0800 107 7726 Seed propagators can be really handy, great for getting tomatoes and other tender plants off to a head start. A beginner gardener might especially appreciate this helping hand. Green's Horticulture stocks two sizes of basic unheated propagator (£4.95 or £11.99) and some more impressive heated models if you want to splash out! www.greenshorticulture.co.uk Tel: 0117 971 3000 Gifts that grow are always popular and winter is a great time to plant fruit trees and bushes. Walcot Organic Nursery stock red, black or white current and gooseberry bushes (all £5 each) and loads of relatively unusual and old fashioned varieties of bare rooted apple trees such as D'Arcy Spice, Blenheim Orange or Egremont Russett many of which have good resistance to common apple pests (all trees £13.50 each). www.walcotnursery.co.uk Tel: 01905 841587.

The Heritage Seed Library, run by Garden Organic, helps to conserve and protect rare and unusual vegetable varieties. Give a gift membership to a "grow your own" gardener and they'll be delighted to support the cause and receive a selection of seeds that are not available anywhere else. You can also "Adopt A Veg"! www.gardenorganic.org.uk Tel: 02476 303517 Food for thought: For a gift that makes a difference why not visit Oxfamunwrapped. There are quite a few gifts that will appeal to gardeners; "Plant an allotment": £24 (I loved this last Christmas!), "Irrigate a farmer's fields":£20, "Give 5 bags of seeds": £10 or "Tools for farmers": £30.www.oxfam.org.ukTel: 0870 410 5030 Centre for Alternative Technology publications has a range of lovely little books that would make great stocking fillers. "How to make soil and save Earth" has vital information for those looking to shrink their ecological footprint, "The little book of Garden Villians" helps green gardeners get to grips with the mighty garden pests that wage war on plants, "The little book of Garden heroes" explains the key to fun and successful organic gardening: design that starts from the soil up, and "The little book of Slugs" has more than 70 different ways to combat this garden pest without recourse to chemical pellets. All £4.99. www.cat.org.uk Tel: 01654 705993 "Back Garden Seed Saving" by Sue Stickland is a wonderful book packed with practical advice gleaned from gardeners who save seeds year after year. Seed saving used to be part of the annual cycle of producing food and this book contains all the wheres and why fors plus crop by crop seed saving for more than 25 vegetables from beetroot to turnips. £12.95, available from Waterstones (www.waterstones.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk).

The "Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening" co-published by Dorling Kindersley and Garden Organic, the national charity for organic growing, is a book all organic gardeners should have. Covering everything you could possible want to know this is the ideal present for someone just starting out with an organic garden. £18.99, available from Waterstones (www.waterstones.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk).

The Royal Horticultural Society have several reference books that have been highly recommended. "Propagating plants" is a superb practical guide showing how to increase your plant stock in easy-to-follow steps and "Pruning and training" is an unrivalled practical handbook to the correct pruning and training of ornamental trees, climbing plants, tree fruit, soft fruit, shrubs and roses. Both are £16.99 in paperback and available from Waterstones (www.waterstones.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk).

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