Good gardening knife recommendations

[Martin H]

I use a curved pruning knife for any little job that doesn't need secateurs. So, cutting string, opening compost bags, taking softwood cuttings, removing rose suckers. The main advantage of the knife (not sure what make it is) is that it's always in my pocket and I sharpen it regularly.

For tougher jobs I fetch the secateurs, the loppers or the pruning saw; for preparing cuttings I use a razor blade.

[Bill HH]

The Swiss army knife is probably the main reason Switzerland has never managed to successfully invade the rest of Europe. After 4 miles of marching 43% of the infantry had their trousers fall down due to the weight in their pockets,10% of the cavalry went lame due to tiny toothpicks and tweezers being embedded in their feet and even worse the complete lack of the thingy to remove stones (and toothpicks) from horses hooves meant the horses remained lame.

I was given one once and lost the toothpick on the first day, the tweezers on the second day and the scissors broke within the week (don't use them for cutting corrugated iron). I lost a fingernail trying to open a small blade.We also ended up with a queue of horses outside demanding to use the tool for removing stones from hooves which I had not got. Paying £45 for one seems completely crazy to me.

B&whatsit did a verve pruning knife for about £6 one good blade and solidly built but I can't see it on their site now, there are lots of similar ones available.