Colourful new garden spades and forks designed by Safe-n-Easy inventor Graham Smith are due to arrive in garden centres later this spring. 

Taking a completely new approach to traditional gardening tools, Smith has come up with a solution designed to be safer, easier to use and carry a strong recycling message.

Customers handing in an old or broken tool at a participating garden centre will be offered £10 off the cost of a Safe-n-Easy fork and spade. The unwanted tools will be repaired in a prison workshop through The Conservation Foundation’s Tools Shed recycling project and then given free to school and community gardeners.

The spades and forks are the first in a range of everyday products Smith is redesigning to make them safer and easier to use, particularly for older people.  “Some 2500 people a year have to visit hospital following an accident with a fork and spade according to ROSPA and many of these are older gardeners,” he explains. “I had the idea for the Safe-n-Easy fork and spade when my father had an accident while digging. He’d also been bothered by backache and so I went back to basics and came up with something that is safer, lighter and needs much less bending and lifting.”

www.safe-n-easy.com