Ten garden 'essentials' I couldn't do without

The light for a plant's growth doesn't need to come from the sun: you can purchase grow lamps to turn a kitchen bench or your spare room into a winter vegetable patch. Add hydroponics instead of soil and you won't get dirt stains on the carpet.

It's amazing how much can be grown in a small hydroponic garden, as we discovered when we inspected the second bedroom of a recently deceased neighbour's house and found the still-thriving commercial marijuana planation that had presumably provided his income for the last couple of decades. (Plants and equipment were immediately eradicated.)

My step-grandmother grew enough spinach and lettuces for her and Grandpa in a tiny benchtop hydroponic garden - Grandpa had filled their backyard with his precious collection of rare native shrubs, grown from cuttings or seedlings.

Her hydroponic garden was the simplest I've ever seen, just a tray of sand filled with seedlings, fed twice a week with liquid fertiliser, with a grow light above it.

If you only have a few pots or a tiny patch, you don't need special equipment. A saucepan for watering and a sturdy tablespoon for planting is quite enough. Try St Vinnies for the tablespoons: modern ones tend to bend even when called upon to scoop out frozen ice-cream.

I used a hard, pointed 'digging stick' for my first few years as a large-scale gardener. The soil was soft and rich with mulch, so that big smooth stick with a bulbous handle at the top was all that was needed to dig a hole to plant, or to harvest the potatoes.

My list of 'first-world necessities' has grown since then. You can easily do without them, but they do make gardening easier.

1. Elbow-length gardening gloves. I've mostly avoided gardening gloves. They seem to collect as much dirt inside as out, so my hands are still filthy. Then I discovered elbow-length gloves. These keep your hands clean and protected from spider bites, but even more importantly, you won't get tiny cuts that might become infected.

In the last three months two friends have been hospitalised with major infections that probably began with a tiny gardening cut. As the climate warms, the fungal and bacterial populations in our southern soil are changing. From now on, it's 'gloves in the garden' - the long, tough, protective kind where any snake might break a fang if they attack.

2. A large, strong garden fork, for digging out weeds, carrots or potatoes. Small trowels are only useful till your knees and back begin to creak. A fork used standing up is far easier than one that needs you crouching on the ground.

3. Possums guards. These are simply wide lengths of slippery metal you fasten round tree trunks or pergola posts. Possums can't climb up them. You may hear the snarls of frustrated possums at 2am but your apples, standard roses and citrus will be safe. You can make you own with plastic ice-cream containers, but do you really want a garden adorned with ice-cream containers? The commercially available possum guards are easy to install, and inconspicuous.

4. A long thick hose that will reach from your back door to anywhere in the garden, so you can turn a sprinkler on at dusk then reach out and turn it off an hour later.

5. Fruit fly exclusion cloth or bags. Our winters are cold enough to be fruit fly free, but around January or February enough have blown in from warmer climates to breed and infest everything from tomatoes to apples with tiny wrigglers. The exclusion bags also keep away possums, fruit bats, and hail, as well and slightly speeding up ripening.

6. A metal bucket. Plastic ones crack after a couple of years when exposed to sunlight. My metal bucket is 48 years old and should last another two generations; it's useful for anything from carrying water to six kilos of apricots, or a cold bottle of homemade lemon cordial and a box of choc-chip biscuits to those labouring to fix the rough patch on the road. It's been used to mix concrete and as a sturdy stepladder, possibly the most useful tool in our garden.

7. A long-spouted watering can. These are elegant and decorative in their own right, and a splendid gift to give anyone with potted plants, hanging baskets, or indoor plants. No reaching, and no spillage: just tip and pour.

8. A wheelbarrow. Keep it clean and it will see good service carrying in the washing or the groceries, or 50 books to donate to St Vinnies or half the crop on the orange tree, as well as being somewhere to throw the weeds till you tip the lot into the compost.

9. A lemon tree. Every year I vainly try to give away apples, finger limes, chokoes, tomatoes, zucchini et al, but no one has ever knocked back a few large ripe lemons.

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10. Two pots, for either side of the front door, with two hyacinth bulbs in each. They will welcome you home, or speed you on your way to work or football practice, and scent your house each time the door is opened.

Many years ago I visited overseas refugee camps. They were as sad as expected, except for the flowers. Almost every tent or shanty had flowers growing in an old tin can by the front door - or tent flap. Flowers aren't a first-world luxury, they comfort our souls.

PS: You do not need: a leaf blower; an outdoor heater (wear boots and a woollen coat and beanie); a mozzie-zapping light that kills useful insects too; artificial turf of any kind; tiny twinkling lights that change colour every three seconds and give visitors a migraine; or a pre-fab cubby. Help the kids make their own on a magic weekend they'll remember long after any cubby delivered on the back on a truck.