Garden scissors

2/24/2020

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Garden scissors are extremely usefully around the garden. Their primary functions are for cutting, clipping shearing and pruning green material. Garden scissors can also be used in the garden for more practical operations such as cutting twine and netting. The reality is the term ‘garden scissors’ means different things to different people.

Some simply believe garden scissors are just heavy duty kitchen scissors suitable for garden work. Many who are new to gardening simply look at one of five tools and ‘garden scissors’ is the only way to describe them. The five tools are Sentei scissors, Garden snips, Garden shears, Loppers and lawn edging shears.

I regularly see this confusion so have listed all the tools people have described as garden scissors in the past.

Heavy duty kitchen shears for gardening

Most of the time when people are searching for gardening scissors they really desire a strong pair of kitchen scissors. Just like most of the time a home gadget ends up being perfect for gardening duties.

Furthermore I have found heavy duty kitchen scissors very useful for gardening throughout the years. They are very good for cutting soft vegetation and cutting cloth and netting for the vegetable patch. I have left some examples of heavy duty scissors suitable for the garden here.

Sentei garden scissors

These Japanese style scissors have been used for centuries in oriental gardens in the east. One of their famous uses was to trim and clip bonsai trees. The unique feature with these scissors is they allow you to insert more fingers into the grips.

This allows you to focus much more power onto a smaller cutting area. This also gives the operator more control over the cutting. Hence Sentei garden scissors are perfect for delicate and intricate trimming.

Garden snips

Garden snips are more like a miniature version of secateurs than scissors. However these snips are capable of doing the jobs both of the latter do. The robust handles and spring mechanisms ensure durability and power.

Furthermore the thin and narrow blades allow the gardener to engage in more precise cutting. Garden snips are perfect for dead heading and intricate activities such as pruning climbers and topiary. We have left some links to varying types on Amazon below.

Garden shears

It may be surprising to some that garden shears can be thought of as garden scissors. But to the untrained eye or people that know little about gardening I can see why they think scissors. Garden shears with their blades, handles and overall look looking similar to scissors do completely different tasks.

Garden shears are generally for trimming hedges and shrubs. These are much larger and robust tackling a greater thickness of green material. Check out some of the examples of these below.

Garden pruning Loppers

Loppers are large pruning devices suitable for larger branches on shrubs or even small trees. They have the form of scissors but much larger with long cylindrical poles for extra leverage.

Loppers are perfect for trimming fruit trees and large soft wood. It is often quite surprising how much power they can generate and what thickness of wood they can cut through. Below are some good examples of loppers.

Garden edging shears

Another gardening tool that can be thought to look like scissors is edging shears. With a scissor like motion these are perfect for cutting grass blades which stick out from the lawn.

These very distinct garden gadgets are also perfect for trimming around awkward obstacles and garden features. In recent times many have stated that garden strimmers can be used to edge lawns instead. However from personal experience these do not give as a refined edge as edging shears.

Ironically scissors can also do the same job well but a little hard on the knees. We have included some edging shears available on Amazon below.