How we choose it

Every tool here can be sharpened and rehandled, and we stock the handles and blades to do it. Orders leave Sheridan within 2 business days. Unused items come back within 30 days; seed cannot, once the packet is open.

A short list, restocked each season

We carry 13 lines across 4 categories, between $28.00 and $128.00. Garden catalogues are long because a garden centre has to fill a building. We only stock what we would buy twice, which turns out to be about a dozen things: a few tools worth sharpening, seed from growers who name the variety, and the containers and supports that do not need replacing every March.

Tools

Forged carbon steel where a tool has to cut or lever, stainless only where it has to sit in wet soil and be forgotten. Handles are ash, riveted through, and every one of them can be replaced — a broken handle is a twenty minute job, not a reason to buy a new spade. We stock the handles.

Seed and stock

Open-pollinated seed wherever it exists, from growers who print the variety and the year of harvest on the packet. That means you can save seed from what you grow and get the same plant next year, which is not true of an F1 hybrid and is the single most useful thing about a seed packet that nobody writes on the front.

Where we are

The Ugly Vase LLC is registered in WY, with its potting shed and shipping desk at 1309 Coffeen Ave Ste 1200, Sheridan, WY 82801. Orders leave from there.