Gardeners can be very enthusiastic when it’s time to name their favorite tools, but nobody will refuse the absolute indispensability of a good pair of hand pruners. You might use a pair of scissors or flower shears for small stems, but one day you’re going to trim, prune or hack back hard, woody stems and you’ll much appreciate the appropriate tool.

Styles

There are three general types of garden pruners: bypass, anvil and ratchet. Bypass garden pruners are the most popular ones. They make a fine clean cut with two curved blades, which bypass each other as in a pair of scissors. One blade is sharpened on the outside edge and it slips by other, more thick unsharpened blade.

Anvil garden pruners usually have a single straight sharpened blade that ends with a flat edge or anvil. Anvil pruners slice just like a knife against a cutting board and do good removing old or dead wood. They run on being a little bigger than bypass pruners, making it more difficult to get close enough for crotch cuts.

Ratchet garden pruners are alike anvil pruners, but they have a mechanism that does the cutting action in stages. Ratchet style hand pruners provide more leveraging for smaller or weaker hands. If you are going to do a great deal of pruning, ratchet pruners can save your wrist health.

Cost

Prices for garden pruners vary from about $10 to over $75. Buying the best tool (read more expesive) might probably save you effort and money in the long run. First thing to look at is brand. Look for a quality brand such as ARS, Felco, Fiskars, Coronaor or Sandvik to name a few. Also look for hand pruners with replaceable parts. It is a mechanical device after all and parts will wear out after some time. Top quality hand pruners come in a vast range of sizes. Felco, for instance, is making their classic model #2 for decades now. It has always been popular among professionals gardeners, but their #6 model is much more comfortable for someone with smaller hands.

Ergonomics

Pruning can exhaust the strongest hands, but if you are already have arthritis, you should look into ergonomically-designed models. There are special handles to reduce pressure, rotating handles to decrease pressure wrist, and many others. For left handed gardeners there is a model designed specially for them.