Unfortunately, gardens don't really come in instant, "just add water" packages. You'll need a truckload of patience, time, a green thumb, and of course, the indispensable gardening tool.

But wait, for a newbie-gardener like you, I bet you don't really know what gardening tools to get, now do you? Especially with all those gardening catalogs you've ordered, filled with pictures of shiny, expensive, new gardening tools to tempt your eye and wallet.

Well, not to worry. This article will teach you the basics of picking out the gardening tool collection that will best suit your gardening needs. You'll be hacking and toiling and getting soil under your fingernails in no time.

The first gardening tool you'll need: the spading fork. This is used to break up the hard, clumped-up ground, making a suitable environment for the seeds to be nourished and grow in. A spading fork is basically a mini-pitchfork with wider and sometimes bent tines.

A hoe is a gardening tool that help weed and cultivate the surface of the soil. It's the next item on your gardening tool shopping list that will enable water and nutrients to get through the soil by keeping it loose and airy.

The watering can is another essential gardening tool that you need to be sure you have. Get one that has a long nozzle, which enables you to control the flow and angle of the water with more ease. A watering can with a detachable spray head is just great for watering the various types of plants which have various water needs around the garden.

You will need a gardening tool that is used to move the earth for your planting projects. For this, get yourself a shovel. A more similar version of this would be the spade, which is used more for cutting than for digging up sould. The spade is most often used for shaping trenches and edging beds.

Kids may be able to relate to the bow rake, the classic gardening tool famous for its many cameos on children's cartoons involving tripping over it in the garden.

This all-too familiar gardening tool has several short tines attached to one side, and is used to gather up fallen leaves and other objects you wouldn't want to find in your garden. It is also used to sift out large clumps of soil that may obstruct your planting area.

Next, the gardening shears. A gardening tool best kept out of the way of curious children. This gigantic pair of scissors is not meant for the kitchen, but rather, for pruning garden plants.

If you're still in the experimenting stages of gardening, here's a tip: don't buy the most expensive shears just yet. A temporary one will let you dull the blades out, and that's all you will lose if you decide you don't like gardening after all.

Those are the basic gardening tools for you, all that you need to start your very first garden. As you expand and grow in your expertise, your gardening activities may require a different bunch of gardening tools altogether. But, that is an entirely new article of gardening tools to consider also.