Succulent Ornament (Set of 3), $55 from Flora Grubb. Three small succulent cuttings come tucked in a box and ready to hang on the tree, or where you would like. The cuttings are live and the box includes instructions on how to plant up the succulents in a container after the holidays!

Gnome Cookie Jar, $52 from Seltzer Studios. I’m pretty sure everyone needs a gnome with a gilded hat. This little guy is made of white porcelain and a whole lot of cute.

Loll Swing, $143.65 from Loll Design. A swing is pretty much the definition of fun. This modern swing from Loll Design is just 100% recycled plastic and can be hung from a tree, porch or swing set.  Perfect for the kids big and small!

Fungus-Among-Us Tea Towel, $28 from makelike. For the forager in your life. This tea towel from the Portland-based design studio makelike is screen printed by hand onto a lovely European linen tea towel. It is really almost too pretty to sully in the kitchen. I think I might hang it up as art instead.

2012 Block Print Wall Calendar, $15 from Rigel Stuhmiller. The artist Rigel Stuhmiller creates beautiful hand carved linoleum block prints of vegetables, fruit and chickens. Her rustic prints are so beautiful and true and the 2012 calendar features 27 of them. At the end of the year you could extend the life of the calendar by framing your favorite prints.

Victory Garden Postcard, $1.75 from the Dead Feminists. This tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt, who planted a victory garden on the lawn of the White House, would make such a nice stocking stuffer. First printed in 2008, the card encouraged First Lady Michelle Obama to follow Mrs. Roosevelt’s lead. I love the graphics and the message.

 Poppy and Butterfly Cloche, $36 from Terrain. I have a small but growing collection of glass cloches that I use indoors as decoration and in the garden during spring as a season extension tool. They add just a touch of elegance to my otherwise very utilitarian vegetable garden. This particular cloche features a pretty painted illustration of flowers and butterflies.

Recycled Glass Bubble Wall Terrariums, $55 from Sprout Home. Terrariums make such a great gift because you can enjoy them long after the holidays are gone. This terrarium sits flush up against a wall and looks particularly cool when filled with moss and air plants.

Subscription to Wilder Quarterly, 59.99 from Wilder Quarterly. The tagline for this brand new quarterly magazine is “a publication for people enthralled with the natural world.” The pages are filled with gorgeous photography and articles that span from recipes to vegetable gardening to travel and design.  It is smart. It is beautiful. And it is definitely a read cover-to-cover-in-one-sitting kind of magazine.

In my wanderings through the internet I come across quite a few fun ideas for gardeners. So I have gathered all my favorite products together and divvied them up in to three holiday gift guides: practical gifts, fun gifts, and books. I thought I’d start off with the list of practical gifts because it is always fun to receive something that you can put to use in the garden!

1. Urbio Vertical Garden, $20 to $200 from Urbio. The designers of these awesome magnetic wall containers raised the seed money for their project on the crowd sourced funding site, Kickstarter. The hip white eco-plastic containers each contain a super-strong magnet that can be placed on any ferrous metallic surface or to special metal back plates that attach to a regular wall. These are so super cool! You can use them to plant succulents, herbs, individual lettuces and create your own custom living wall. Unfortunately they aren’t quite ready to ship for the holidays, but you can pre-order the Urbio planters and they will arrive in your mailbox in early 2012.

2. Moleskin Recipe Journal, $19.95 from Moleskin: I adore my recipe journal, because it gives me one place to record all the recipes that I make up on the fly. The journal has a thick black cover with a cute embossed design. Inside there are tabs for appetizers, first course, main dishes, side dishes and desserts. Each page has plenty of room to jot down ingredients, instructions, and notes for when you make the recipe again.

3. Kamik Jennifer Rainboots, $65 from Zappos: I’ve had a pair of Kamik wellies for several years and they are the best! So comfortable, easy to hose off and completely waterproof.  My pair lives by the back door and I wear them almost every single day to feed the chickens, walk the dog, and garden. I particularly love this new Hunter-like style. So cute!

4. 5” Stirrup Hoe with a Replaceable Blade, $47 from Johnny’s Select Seeds: If I could only have one tool, I would choose a stirrup hoe because it makes weeding so fast and easy. The oscillating, stirrup-shaped blade cuts right under the soil, slicing off the roots of weeds. This particular hoe is the best because it has a blade that you can replace when it gets dull.

5. Botanical Series Write and Erase Plant Tags, $17 from Sprout Home. Ever forget to label the plants in your garden and end up wondering what exactly you grew at the end of the season? Me too. Which is why I love these plant tags! They are super sturdy and you can rub the label off at the end of the season and use them again the following year.

6. JR, Richard, and Ralph Birdhouses, $195 from Modern Birdhouses. A birdhouse always makes a fine gift, especially in winter. These simple birdhouses are made of sustainably harvested teak and were designed to entice cavity-dwelling birds like chickadees, bluebirds, and wrens. They have a removable floor, which makes it easy to keep the houses clean.

7. Bamboo Gloves, $24 from Ethel gloves. I don’t really like to wear gloves when I’m gardening  unless I am hauling rocks or cutting brambles. But when I do need to wear gloves, I reach for my pair of Ethel gloves, because they protect my hands without getting in the way. These gloves are made from a bamboo material that is thin, but durable, has just the right amount of stretch and is anti-microbial. And the suede like material provides plenty of grip, but is completely vegan-friendly.

8. Colorful Tubtrug, $16.95 from Gardener’s Supply Company. Tubtrugs are so versatile! You can use them to haul soil, compost, and yard debris, and as a storage container. I have a bright yellow one and would be happy to have trug in every color!

9. Seeds from Wild Garden Seeds. Seeds make great stocking stuffers and buying from Wild Garden gives you the opportunity to help sustain the Morton family, who have undertaken the hard and important work of developing new, regionally adapted, open pollinated vegetable varieties for organic gardeners and farmers. Some of my favorite varieties, including ‘Solar Flashback’ calendula (pictured above), ‘Rainbow Lacinato’ kale and ‘Purple Peacock’ broccoli were bred by Wild Garden and all of the seed they sell is certified organic and grown at the Gathering Together Farm in Southern Oregon.

10. Smith & Hawken Potting Bench, $799 from Target. Okay, so this is clearly a splurge, but it really is a lovely yet practical potting bench! It is made of FSC-certified, naturally rot resistant eucalyptus wood and is full of clever design details, like a lift-off work surface that has soil storage bins underneath. The racks above give you plenty of space to organize pens, plant tags, and fertilizers, and there is lots of space to store pots. Plus, you could use it as a outdoor buffet/barbecue work station in summer after all your pots are filled.

Today Missoni’s collection for Target goes on sale! I have always loved the crazy colors and patterns in Missoni textiles and I was so excited to see that there are some slightly garden related products in the line up. And that I can actually afford them.

I realize that a bike is not the most obvious garden tool, but I would love to ride it to our neighborhood nursery while wearing the big sun hat. Then I could come home and lounge on my modern patio furniture while eating a homegrown salad off the zigzag plates. Following that, I could slip my feet into my wellies, step out into my garden and snip a few cosmos and zinnias and put them in the cute black and white vases.

Even though the wellies are the only thing I actually need (my old ones have cracked and now let water in), I can’t wait to head over to Target and check the Missoni goodies in person!

Today over at Re-Nest I share 3 of my very favorite  small, family owned seed companies: Wild Garden Seeds, Kitazawa Seed, and Seeds from Italy. You can click right here to read more about why I buy seeds from each of these three companies, but I thought it also might be fun to name some of my favorite varieties here.

Wild Garden Seeds

‘Purple Peacock’ broccoli. Amazing cross between broccoli and kale. You can eat everything on this plant and it survives the winter in the Pacific Northwest. Fabulous!

‘Survior’ Italian parsley. A great, long lasting and  cold tolerant parsley with a nice taste.

‘Triangle Flashback’ calendula. This beautiful calendula is nothing like the garden variety orange one that is so common. It has tons of tapered petals and looks almost like a strawflower. Stunning on salads.

‘Delicata Zeppelin’ winter squash. This wonderful, delicious delicata squash has a great story. In the late 1990s a field of delicata squash that was grown for seed cross pollinated with gourds, resulting in fruit with a terrible bitter flavor. Pretty much every seed company in the country bought their seed from this source. This variety has been grown out from seed saved before the contamination and it is always delicious!

‘Flashy Butter Gem’ lettuce. I love this lettuce because it combines the color and flavor of my favorite lettuce variety, ‘Forellenschluss’, with the texture of my favorite types of lettuce, butterhead. It is is so pretty and tasty!

Kitazawa Seed

Misome. This is a spinach like green that grows well in cool weather. Very tasty and quick.

Tatsoi. Tatsoi is my favorite green for stir fries because each deep green leaf has a crunchy white petiole. Goes to seed quickly in the heat, but it is a great spring and fall crop.

‘Hojiso’ red and green shiso. The undersides of this green herb are colored bright violet. So pretty! Also very tasty in a cucumber salad.

‘Pak Choi’ green. Super pretty, easy to grow from seed and fast!

Seeds from Italy

‘Quarantina’ cima di rapa (broccoli rabe). This broccoli rabe matures in under 40 days, which means there is still time to get it in the ground for a fall crop.

‘Rossa di Treviso’ radicchio. Most radicchio that you find at the grocery store is round, but I prefer the elongated Treviso types. They have a slightly loose head, but the same bitter taste.

‘Super Marconi’ pole bean. The perfect green for grilling because the fat pods do not fall through the great. They have an almost meaty texture and a sweet, delicious flavor.

‘Cavolo Nero’ kale. A gorgeous black kale with deeply rumpled leaves. Grows well from seed and tastes delicious raw, stir fried, braised, and roasted.

‘Early Purple’ kohlrabi. I love to cut a kolrabi into matchsticks, drizzle olive oil and lemon juice over the top, plus a bit of coarse sea salt. It makes an excellent snack or a quick side dish.

(Image: ‘Flashy Butter Gem’ lettuce via Wild Garden Seed)

I love a good wall calendar. It is so fun to flip over a page and find a new piece of artwork every single month. And at the end of the year, I always page back through the calendar and remember vacations, and trips to the beach, and dinners with friends. It’s just not quite the same on my iPhone.

Heidi Schweigert, a Minnesota-based graphic designer and illustrator, put together a wonderful 2011 calendar celebrating the gardening season. The calendar’s ingenious design allows you to cut the calendar sheets down into 5 x7 postcards at years end! A perfect gift a gardener—or anyone who appreciates lovely vegetables—don’t you think?

The Market Calendar with Bulldog Clip is available for $25 on Heidi’s Etsy shop, Redcruiser. The inspiration for the calendar came from Heidi’s own kitchen garden, where she grows ’Black of Tula’, ‘Brandywine’, and ‘Juane Flamme’ tomatoes and my favorite butterhead lettuce, ‘Little Gem’.

The first weekend in May is an important weekend for gardening in Seattle because Seattle Tilth and the Master Gardener Foundation of King County both hold awesome plants sales. Tilth has an amazing selection of locally-grown organic vegetable starts and the Master Gardener plant sale features gorgeous perennials, many of which are raised by local Master Gardeners. Both sales are major fundraisers and the proceeds go to benefit gardening education. Plus, they are only 2.1 miles apart, which means there is really no excuse not to hit both!

I’m planning on buying perennials at the Master Gardener sale and most of my warm season crops at the Tilth sale (you can check out which vegetable and herb varieties they are offering online). Here’s my long shopping list:

Purple peacock broccoli

Perfection fennel

National Pickling Cuke

Walla Wall Sweet Onion

Deep Purple Scallions

Little Bells pepper

Jimmy Nardello pepper

Beaver Dam pepper

Klari Baby Cheese pepper

Early Jalapeno

Bulgarian Carrot pepper

Fish pepper

Long Red Narrow cayenne

Golden Zucchini

Eight Ball summer squash

Trombocino summer squash

Table Queen acorn squash

Zeppelin delicata squash

New England Pie pumpkin

Sungold cherry tomato

White Currant tomato

Jaune Flamme tomato

Green Zebra tomato

Mexican Purple tomatillo

At the beginning of March we dug up a big portion of our backyard to install more vegetable gardening space. The project is almost done (!) but in the interim we’ve tracked approximately five yards of soil into our house. I swear, all I do is sweep. Having a doormat outside the mudroom would really help (as would actually taking off my wellies and leaving them on the deck).

I’ve been on the hunt for a mat that is nice and thick and not made of rubber. These 100% coconut fiber mats from India Rose completely fit the bill.  Not only are they really cute and only $35, but you can compost them when they wear out!  My only problem is I can’t decide which one I like best.

Lately I’ve been thinking of how to use more recycled materials in the vegetable garden, so when I stumbled across these plant tags made from silver spoons, I was completely smitten. The vegetable, herb, and insect drawings are done by hand using archival ink and sealed onto vintage silver-plated flatware with a moisture and UV-resistant finish. A super cute way to mark herbs in the kitchen garden, don’t you think?

Each individual plant marker runs between $6.00 and $13.00 depending on the size of the spoon, knife, or fork used.

If you want to butter someone up, these butter knives would make a fun last-minute valentine.

To check out the entire selection of silver spoon garden markers or to place a custom order, visit daisychestnut’s shop on Etsy!

I am a sucker for good package design in general. But when a cute package contains heirloom seeds, I cannot resist. These “art packs” are sold by the Hudson Valley Seed Library, a non-profit based in Accord, New York that offers (mostly) locally grown and regionally adapted seed varieties. Each seed packet in the series is designed by a New York-region artist to celebrate the beauty of heirloom seeds. The Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper packets are printed with vegetable based inks—and while they are recyclable, or even compostable, I think they belong in a picture frame more than the paper bin

The Hudson Valley Seed Library was started by Doug Muller and Ken Greene, two young farmers with a dream of creating an “accessible and affordable source of regionally-adapted seeds that is maintained by a community of caring gardeners.” They sell seeds grown on the seed library’s farm and by other local farmers and gardeners, but they also encourage people to save their own seed and share it. If you pay $20 to become a member of the seed library, you get discounts on seed packs and events and 10 packets of plainly packaged seed of your choice. Best of all, members who save seeds can return them to the seed library in exchange for a discount on the following season’s membership fee. If you’re a novice seed saver, no worries. The seed library offers classes, workshops, and information on seed saving.

This organization provides such an interesting and valuable model for encouraging seed saving among home gardeners and preserving seed diversity. Wouldn’t it be cool if this concept expanded into a system of seed libraries across the country, with each one growing and offering heirloom and open-pollinated seed suited to local climate conditions?

Even though I live in an opposite corner of the country from the Hudson Valley Seed Library, I’m definitely placing an order for Spotted Trout Lettuce (aka Forellenschluss). This German heirloom has outstanding flavor and is a mainstay in my garden because it handles heat, cold, and rain with aplomb. I could buy ‘Forellenschluss’ at my local nursery, but I want to spend a few of my dollars at this seed library in the hopes that it thrives and grows—maybe even into my own part of the world.

Sweet Pure Honey is the kind of small businesses that I absolutely love supporting. Kelly Snowden from Food & Wine first introduced me to Sweet Pure Honey when she included a few beeswax tea lights in her Recipe and Seed Swap package. I had just gotten my honeybees and I loved the candles, the packaging, everything. So I got in touch with Stella, who co-owns Sweet Pure Honey with her husband, Sheldon, and we’ve been chatting by email ever since.

Stella just has a wonderful presence and she is so passionate about honey, and her business, and her family. She and Sheldon raise bees–and three beautiful children–on the plains surrounding the small farm community of Porcupine Plains, Saskatchewan. Like so many beekeepers, Sheldon often has to work away from home during the winter to make ends meet, so they decided that rather than sell all of their honey to wholesale honey brokers, they would start a business that directly sells honey and beeswax products at a fair price for them and their customers.

They put together a wonderful selection of products–honey, lip and body balms, and long burning candles–made with honey from their hives.

They are committed to providing fair compensation for their partner farmers, giving back to their local community, and building a business that allows them to support their kids Marley, Sierra, and Lauren (who are almost too cute to handle, don’t you think?).

I am obsessed with their lip balm (it is pretty much the only thing that helps my constantly chapped lips) and their honey has an amazing floral flavor. Anyways, I just love Sweet Pure Honey and I hope you guys do too! You can find them online at Facebook (just search for sweetpurehoney.ca) and at their soon to be up-and-running website.