10 best garden tools for spring gardening, according to a Canadian gardening expert

A square-mouthed garden spade is "a lot more versatile than a shovel," explains Cullen. "The reason it's my number one [tool] is that you can do everything with a spade that you could do with a shovel and more." It's "great" for digging holes, planting plants, diving perennials and more, says Cullen. "Everything a shovel does, a square-mouthed spade does and more. You name it!"

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A leaf rake is "really helpful in the spring when you're cleaning up debris from the surface of the soil in your garden," Cullen tells Yahoo Canada. It's "extremely helpful" for removing winter debris, cleaning up trimmings and prunings, and pulling "grass blades back up" after the snow has melted.

"A pair of hand pruners is extremely helpful for a lot of things," Cullen explains. "Number one: Cutting flowers to bring indoors. A pair of hand pruners on a woody stem is a piece of cake." The gardening expert advises that if you have to prune something up to the thickness of your baby finger, "a pair of hand pruners does the job best of all."

A bastard file is a "heavy-duty metal file" that partners with any tool that requires a "really sharp edge," says Cullen, like a hoe and a shovel.

Cullen notes that a hard rake is "really good" for levelling soil, removing debris from the ground surface and levelling out mulch. The New Canadian Garden author tells Yahoo Canada that a hard rake is "really handy" in a vegetable garden. "I wouldn't go in a vegetable garden without a hard rake to get the soil nice and level before I create a row of vegetables," he says. "The hard rake does that job best of all."

Simply put, "everyone needs a shovel," Cullen says. For moving soil, "there's no substitute for a good sharp shovel." Cullen, the volunteer chair of Trees for Life, advises "putting an edge on" your shovel via a grinding wheel and then keeping it sharp with a bastard file.

A gardening fork is "really great" if you're moving plants around your yard and "don't want to disturb the roots too much." If you want to pick up and move a plant, Cullen says not to use a spade or shovel but rather "use a gardening fork." Plus, it's "great" for turning compost.

Cullen says it's worth investing in a good-quality trowel. "If you have a cheap little trowel, you're probably digging three, four or five times" more than you would with a large, high-quality trowel. "It saves you a lot of work and time, and it's a lot more fun," he tells Yahoo Canada.

According to Cullen, water-resistant gardening gloves are "great" when you need to be in the soil and have a "tactile experience." The gardening enthusiast says he keeps a pair in "every corner of [his] garden and in every garden shed" so that he never has "to go very far to find one if they aren't already in [his] back pocket."

"The difference between a cheap garden hose and a quality garden hose is really the difference between a tricycle and a Mercedes," explains Cullen. "It's that dramatic." A cheap garden hose won't uncoil, kinks very easily and doesn't seal properly, whereas a quality garden hose "acts like real rubber" and "will last a lifetime," he says.