The Official Spork™ Website

If you’ve tried to tackle some serious cultivating in the garden, but found there’s not one tool that will work it with ease, the Spork™ provides the solution you’re looking for.

The Spork™ cuts in like a fork and digs a spit like a spade. It chops roots, slices turf and breaks up heavy ground.

An award-winning, patented design, hand-forged from solid, top quality steel, the Spork™ makes light work of the heaviest ground and eases you through the toughest garden tasks.

It saves you time, cuts down the back-breaking effort and brings you a garden you’ll be proud of. Destined to become one of the must-have garden tools, it’ll soon become your trustiest cultivation companion and you’ll wonder how you ever dug the garden without it.

The Spork™ fronts up a range of truly inspirational garden tools. Each is hand-forged by De Wit of Holland.

See the Full Range

The unique design is the brainchild of Oxfordshire Landscaper/engineer Robert Todd, a man with a determined drive to engineer solutions to everyday challenges.

Find out more

Ingenious and innovative, the Spork™ has grabbed the interest of gardening experts, sparked intrigue from the press and triumphed in trials.

Spork™ in the News

Chelsea Flower Show

This is DeWit’s stand, our manufacturer, selling Sporks at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Stand number PW2 DeWit.

Why use anything else!

The Spork multi-purpose family of garden tools was designed by Oxfordshire Landscaper Robert Todd and is made by De Wit in Holland.

Each tool is hand-forged from top quality carbon steel with a special burnished finish that protects the metal and allows it to blacken with age, like the tools in Edwardian times. The hardened boron steel blades have maximum strength and stay sharp. All tools are uniquely stamp-forged and double-welded for the very finest of quality and strength.

The shaft is made from solid ash of the finest quality, with a naturally dried, rather than kiln-dried, ash handle. This makes the tool feel good in your hands, improves flexibility, strength and long life. Ash handles are oiled, but otherwise untreated to allow wood to breath and build up natural patina, just like traditional tools. They weather well and won’t split.

Each tool is lightweight and well balanced so you enjoy even the hardest gardening tasks!

Digging Spade

Cast aside your digging spade and cutting fork – cultivating your garden no longer needs to be such hard work!

If you are an amateur or experienced gardener you will know all too well the thought of preparing the soil and ground with your digging spade or fork can seem like a daunting task. Of course you know that this hard work has to be done before you can enjoy the benefits of a beautiful garden. Now you can make lighter work of digging and weeding, clearing and cultivating whilst working the soil to a tilth with the Spork^TM garden tool. It is an innovative solution that combines a fork and spade in one, and is so effective that you will probably wonder how you ever managed without it.

Invented by Oxford landscaper Robert Todd in 1992 who had become frustrated with having to use both a spade and fork to cultivate a particularly hard area of ground one day, made the first ever prototype Spork^TM in his garden workshop. Admired by gardeners such as Charlie Dimmock, Monty Don and journalists from Gardens Made Easy, Telegraph, Garden Ideas and The Sunday Times to name a few, the Spork^TMhas become an essential tool for many when working the soil.

Following on from the success of the Spork^TM, Robert has developed a whole family of tools to help you deal with the following gardening tasks:

Spork^TM – supports soil like a digging spade and riddles like a fork, making lighter work in all soil types, slicing action with reduced clogging and drag – (Handles come in D, T and long T options)
^·Midi Spork^TM– Half the size, half the weight of the Spork™ and suited to lighter gardening tasks, especially good for those who find it difficult to kneel or crouch in flower beds and borders. Kinder on the wrist.
^·Mini Spork^TM –shorter handle than the Midi Spork™ great for prising out awkward plants in confined areas, dividing plants in rockeries and borders etc.
^·Long pull Spork^TM- Mattock-action tool combines tilling and hoeing (Garden News, Buy of the Week)
^·Long handled push Spork^TM – three-in-one tool for hoeing, forking and cultivating in vegetable patches, deep borders and hard to reach areas
^·Hand pull Spork^TM – good for breaking up heavy or stony ground or removing tough weeds in flower borders.
^·Dinky Spork^TM – good for preparing seed trays, pricking out etc, window boxes, pots and tubs. Great for an introductory gift!
Hand Spork^TM- multi-purpose tool for weeding, planting, forking and hoeing by hand (Recommended Best Buy in BBC Gardeners World Magazine – September 2008)
Tree Spork^TM– highly effective when used for digging planting holes for trees and shrubs, especially effective in hard or root laden soils. Helps to loosen soil at bottom of holes for faster more successful growth.
Sprake^TM – Close to the ground cutting for removal of saplings and large weeds. Rake and clear away in one action!
Sprooter – Uniquely effective for extracting larger weeds and plants with a tap root.

Manufactured by the world renowned De Wit company from Holland, these fine quality tools are hand-forged from highest quality carbon steel and come with a burnished finish that protects the metal and which blackens with age. The blades are made from boron steel for strength and remain sharper for longer. The shaft is made from ash and is naturally dried. The ash handles are oiled and weather well with age. Comfortable feel and lightweight they are built for strength, flexibility and long life.

Why buy a separate digging spade and digging fork when you can buy a universal multi-purpose tool – the family of Spork™ tools are a must have in any garden shed and can be bought now from the Spork^TM online shop.

Which? Gardening magazine

In October 2008 Spork™ was voted “Testers” favourite by Which? Gardening magazine.

In the Which? Gardening trial the Spork™ was pitched against nine other border tools by a team of professional gardeners. The trial was conducted over four weeks and all tools were assessed for a range of tasks: Continue reading →

Spade or fork?

WHETHER IT’S a fork or a spade I don’t know, but this interesting range of garden tools marketed by Oxford based company Spork Tools is really stylish. This expanded tool collection, with the original Spork blade designed by Rob Todd, has a tool for every soil condition and gardening task. It is like a combination of a fork and a spade and is highly crafted to last a lifetime.

Monty backs Spork™

Growing Veg magazine 2008

In 2008 green-fingered inventor Rob Todd is digging a new channel to success after ensuring this creation received celebrity endorsement.

Three months ago, Mr Todd, who is based at Water Eaton, Oxford, packed his car with a range of his Sporks™ – a cross between a spade and a fork – and delivered them to the home of

gardening guru Monty Don, left.

He heard nothing more until last week when an enthusiastic Mr Don visited the BBC ‘Gardeners World’ Live Show, spent half an hour at the stand of manufacturer DeWit, and then featured the innovative tools on the TV programme.

Robert Todd said:

I decided to take a chance, drive to Monty Don’s house in Herefordshire, and deliver the tools. He was not there, so I just left them with a friend of his. The next thing I heard, he arrived at the stand and said he wanted to put the tools on the TV show as he really liked them.

The Spork tools are steadily reaching across Europe and the world with sales now in 16 countries.

Success for the Spork™

Readers of this paper with long memories will remember the seemingly mad lanscape gardener-come-inventor who, while tackling the brambles on a remote island in the Thames belonging to Oxford City Council, came up with the idea for the implement – an offspring of the spade and the fork.

That Eureka moment in the mid 1990s marked the start of a long lesson in reality engineering, or the mystic business of turning a notion into an object, for inventor Rob Todd, who also has a background in engineering and a strong interest in metalwork.

Mr Todd, then 34, reminisced:

“I found that I kept changing between the fork and spade, which was irritating and seemed a waste of time.

After about 20 prototypes, the Spork can cut through roots, shake out the earth and make it easy to deposit weeds left on its surface. It also has another advantage over a fork in that the tines don’t bend.”

“Your article really lit the fuse. I went on television three times,

was in most of the nationals, and lots of gardening magazines.”

The Dutch factory will make seven different tools, ranging from the world’s first cutting-edge rake to a trowel-sized hand Spork.

The revolutionary tools, now better and smarter, are already for sale with Mr Todd’s successful breakthrough in Holland.

And how do the new tools, made with sleek carbon steel (stonger than stainless), and complete with wooden handles, actually perform?

” Well as you said, quite simply they are stronger and one can see from history which tools last longest and it’s not the cheap imports.

Already they have won one prestigious award – and from my short experiment of using the cutting rake on some nettles, I can see them winning others soon.

The Daily Telegraph

In March 2002, The Daily Telegraph’s ‘Tried and Tested’ correspondent Jean Vernon trialled the Spork, three leading makes of spade and two mattock digging spades. She rated the Spork’s performance as very good and value for money as good.

She said:

“This hybrid between a fork and a spade, unlike many two-in-one tools, offers an excellent alternative. The head makes short work of digging. I found it sharp, easy to use and returned to it time and again when planting the hedge saplings.”