Nurture And Protect Your Most Important Gardening Tool, Your Hands

“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.”Courtesy of Rudyard Kipling.

One of the most important tools a gardener has is their hands - so you need to know how to take care of them, protect them while gardening, and help them recover so they are ready to work again.

What Are Gardening Hands?

The term ‘gardening hands’ is usually used to describe a pair of hands that illustrate straight away that they are the hands of someone who loves to garden. Gardening hands typically have calluses, dirt under their nails and may be rough or soil-stained, reflecting how many times they have been in contact with drying soil and water. Whilst hands like this are regarded as a ‘badge of honour’ and show you love your garden, you also need to keep your hands clean and healthy to ensure you can keep gardening and carry out all your other hobbies. So you need to make time out to look after your hands so you can continue to garden week after week, month after month, year after year.

A Soapy Barrier for Cleaner Nails

One of the easiest ways of looking after your hands when gardening takes just a few seconds before you get started - and a good bar of soap! You can use any type of soap, or a special ‘gardeners’ soap such as our Traditional Gardeners Soap with Ground Pumice Stone.

The aim is to create a barrier with the soap so that you prevent dirt from getting lodged deep under your nails as you garden, making it easier to clean up afterwards, so less scrubbing is needed to keep your nails clean. To easily fill the space under your nails with soap, wet your finger tips with water and then scrape your nails across the surface of a bar of soap so some of the soap gets lodged under your nails. That’s all you need to do to ensure soil doesn’t get stuck under your nails as you work in your garden. Once you’re finished working outdoors you can then wash your hands, with the soap washing from under your nails leaving them clean and soil free.

A Pre-Gardening Layer of Hand Cream

Another method many experienced gardeners use to keep their hands both protected from dirt, prevent the skin drying out and help stop chafing and blisters as they work is to liberally apply hand cream before starting to garden. Ideally you should use a very rich, heavy-duty moisturising cream for the best results, such as our Gardener’s Barrier Hand Cream.

This cream contains Aloe Vera, Calendula, Shea Butter and Jojoba Oil which all combine together to form an effective protective layer over your skin as you garden. Applied over your hands it forms a soft, thin layer which will shield your skin from harmful substances as you weed, dig, sow or plant in your garden. It’s also loved by many gardeners as it has a delightfully fresh scent of Lemon Balm and Begarnot. Applying a layer of cream prior to working in your garden also makes it easier to wash up afterwards, as dirt doesn’t stick to your skin as easily.

A Thorough Wash Up After Gardening

When you garden your hands can become dirty due to handling soil or compost, weeds or plants and it’s easy to understand why you need to wash up to remove the grime. But apart from the dirt you can see, you can also come into contact with harmful germs and bacteria as you dig in the soil and to prevent spreading these germs to other things which you handle it’s crucial that you wash your handles thoroughly. The best way of being thorough is to ‘pre-soak’ your hands in warm water for a few minutes before applying soap and rubbing your hands together, scrubbing between your fingers and using a nail brush to scrub around and under fingernails.

When you have stubborn stains on your hands from gardening, then using a special gardeners soap containing a mild abrasive, such as our exfoliating soap which includes ground walnut shells, will remove ground in dirt or difficult stains.

This Gardeners Luxury Exfoliating Soap is made using pure vegetable oils and enriched with shea butter so that it produces a rich, silky lather which scents and nourishes your skin. Combined with its exfoliating properties, your hands should finish feeling refreshed and vitalised.

Rehydrate and Nuture Your Hands

Moisturiser was developed to help replenish lost moisture from your skin. Although your skin loses moisture from both internal factors - such as not drinking enough water - and external factors - like dry, windy weather - gardening increases moisture loss.

Gardening involves physical activities like digging in the soil, more exposure to the elements as you work outdoors and the frequent need to wash your hands to remove any dirt. All of these things help to strip the skin of its natural oils so it can become dry and dehydrated. In addition whilst you garden you expose your skin to scratches or scraps or irritation as you work amongst the stems and branches of your plants.

This makes it really important that you get into a routine of thoroughly moisturising your hands after you have finished gardening for the day. Select a moisturiser that includes shea butter which will sooth and condition your skin or aloe vera that not only moisturises, soothes and rehydrates your skin it also has anti-inflammatory properties to reduce redness and irritation.

Designed to nourish, care for and hydrate your hardworking gardening hands our Gardeners Hydrating Hand Cream is a rich cream that contains aloe vera which helps with cracks and splits in your skin, helping your hands to feel silky smooth again. It's easy to apply and quickly absorbed so you don’t have to wait around and can carry on with your other activities whilst it works its magic, restoring your skin so it's ready to face the rigours of gardening again.

Maintain Active Gardening Hands with Massage

Many of the repetitive actions needed as you garden, such as squeezing secateurs as you prune or trim, digging with a spade, fork or hand tools or even simply pulling up weeds can all mean that your hands can be aching once you finish. To help with aches and pains in your hands and wrists there are a few massaging techniques you can easily do at home to ease tension, increase blood flow and improve flexibility.

Just spending five minutes after gardening to massage your hands should release tension and prevent soreness, helping to keep your hands healthy and ready for when you garden again.

Work Wonders with a Weekly Hand Soak

Putting aside just 30 minutes a week to treat your hands to a soak will not only help to relieve joint stiffness or pain, it also provides your hands with intense, deep hydration and helps to soothe any skin irritations.

Prepare a large bowl by filling it with warm, not hot water as hot water would have a negative effect, stripping more natural oils from your skin and making them even dryer. To enhance the relaxing and soothing properties of the warm water, you can add between two to four tablespoons of Epsom salts, stirring until dissolved. You should then soak your hands for up to twenty minutes. Whilst soaking your hands, gently move your fingers, spreading, stretching and opening and closing them to help relieve any stiffness.

After this soothing soak, simply rinse your hands in clean water to remove any salt residue and pat dry. To then seal in the hydration to your skin immediately, apply a generous amount of moisturiser, massaging the cream all over your hands, between your fingers and around your nails.

Using the luxurious hand cream from this Kew Gift Set after soaking your hands will help to deeply nourish your skin whilst providing a scent that is wonderfully uplifting and clarifying. Created to delight the senses, the fragrance has a zesty lime scent, blended perfectly with the clean, aromatic notes of lemongrass, whilst shea butter smooths, soothes, and conditions your skin.

Be Prepared to Pamper Yourself

Hopefully, the information we have provided will help you to care for your hands so they will be invigorated and ready to get busy in your garden next time you get the chance to go outdoors. If you need anything to help you care for your gardening hands, then we stock a wide range of soaps, creams and gift sets specially selected to suit every type of gardener.

If you are looking for a practical range of products ideal for your utility room or mudroom, our Passionate Gardeners Skincare Bundle is perfect.

We hope this post in our journal has given you some useful information on caring for your hands, but please remember we are only human so although we aim to be as accurate as possible, if you see a mistake, please accept our apology for our human error! If you have any helpful hints and tips for other gardeners on looking after your hands, we’d love to hear from you.