Guess there are no Speedy Weedys or Yard Butlers, leaf blowers or weed whackers in the Sweetman garage!
There are quite a few classics in there, along with some "unusual, useless, and downright hilarious" tools that will be shared at a Jenkins workshop tomorrow called "Cutting Edge Gardening."
Some of the tools in Sweetman's collection were donated to the arboretum. Some he bought at yard sales for $5 or less. And some he inherited from his father and grandfather, sheep farmers and gardeners in Colorado long ago.
And then there are the so-called goofy tools, the menacing weed-killers that resemble jaws of death. You step on a fulcrum and the thing bites into a weed, then plunges the carcass into a bucket.
It's bloodless, barely, unlike the 1950s-era lawn razor, which looks like a hand sickle with biblical roots and a horror-flick twist: 10 single-edge razor blades tucked into a curved blade and bolstered with screws.
It still has paint on it. "You can tell this tool never got used," Sweetman says, which may be a blessing. "I just am amazed that people invented these things."
To a novice, they're an interesting surprise, as is the discovery that there are folks out there willing to pay $600 for a vintage watering can. Turns out, old garden tools are much in demand by gardeners and collectors.
Long ago, they were coveted by almost everyone.
According to Sandy Levins, president of the Camden County Historical Society, garden tools were routinely included in colonial estate sales. The inventory from Pomona Hall, home of Camden's Cooper family, lists everything from a "ditching shovel" and garden shears to a "watering pott" and no fewer than four kinds of hoes.
