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:

• loosening and turning soil
• clearing weeds
• planting perennials and shrubs.

Seven of the eight Which? testers would happily buy a Spork™ and three would even swap their conventional spade for one.

The serrated cutting edge was sharp and easily cut through soil and small roots. The Spork™ is good for digging, planting and turf edging.

“an ideal compromise between a spade and a fork -I would definitely buy one” said one tester.

“great for clay/loam soils, good for digging and turning over soil, and for breaking up compacted ground,” said another. It was light and comfortable to use thanks to the longer length handle.

Source Which? Gardening October 2008

Trade discount is available for multiple purchase orders to landscapers, nurseries and local authorities, etc.

Additional Discounts

Discounts are also available to gardening clubs, allotment committees, charities and schools.

For further information please email info@sporkgardentools.com

The initiative comes as demand for growing spaces is at an all time high – with more than 100,000 people currently on allotment waiting lists ” as people look to spend more time with friends or family, exercising in the outdoor “gym” and enjoying the fresh food they can produce.

Each of the new growing spaces will be created on communities’ doorsteps throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and will be registered through the new Landshare website set up by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to “match-make” between keen growers and available land.
Fiona Reynolds, Director General of the National Trust, said:

There’s something in the air. More and more people want to grow their own fruit and vegetables. This isn’t just about saving money it’s really satisfying to sow seeds and harvest the fruit and veg of your labour. By creating new growing spaces the National Trust can help people to start growing for the first time.

We’re also looking to recruit many more volunteers with fruit and vegetable growing skills and knowledge to join us, so that we can offer even more practical help and advice to new gardeners.

Equal to the number of allotments plots already found in York, the new National Trust growing spaces will be available at around 40 different locations. They will vary in size, from smaller plots suited to new growers taking their first steps, to larger areas suitable for community growing schemes.

It has been estimated that these new growing spaces could produce up to around 2.6 million lettuces per year, 50,000 sacks of potatoes or, alternatively, mixed produce worth up to an estimated £ 1.5 million.

The new National Trust growing spaces will be in restored kitchen gardens, agricultural land or on vacant land near to Trust properties. The plan poses no risk to the Trust’s conservation objectives.

Fiona Reynolds continued:

‘We already have allotments and active kitchen gardens at 50 of our properties and many of these already provide spaces for communities to come together and grow their own fruit and veg. But there’s a huge demand for us to do more. We’ve taken the first steps to increase the amount of growing spaces available, and we are working with Landshare to encourage other landowners to do the same.’

As part of the initiative, the National Trust is turning over the back garden of its London office in Queen Anne’s Gate to become an allotment used by staff.

Monty Don commented:

‘I am delighted that the National Trust is setting an inspirational example by creating an allotment at their headquarters in the heart of London.’

‘If every organisation and company did the same then it would transform the health and well-being of the Nation as well as significantly contribute to our National Food supply. In this time of crisis and chaos this is exactly the kind of practical enlightened action that will rebuild and create a better future.’

Geoff Stokes, National Secretary for the National Society of Allotment & Leisure Gardeners, said:

‘The demand for allotment sites is huge and it is great that the National Trust is able to use some of its land to help people grow their own. The growth in demand has been happening over the last few years, and though the credit crunch is helping to stir interest, the main reason more people want to grow their own is to improve their quality of life.’

The Trust is aiming to have all of its new growing spaces available by 2012 at the latest and will seek to encourage schools, community groups and charities to make use of the new sites, as well as individuals.

Fiona Reynolds added:

Our main aim is to help those who are new to growing to find the space they need but we also want to help them learn how and what to grow. National Trust gardeners and our excellent garden volunteers will be able to pass on their skills and knowledge. But we are also calling for new volunteers - especially experienced fruit and vegetable gardeners –  to join us to provide extra help and advice where it is needed.’

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 isi hand-forged by De Wit of Holland and comes with a full lifetime guarantee.

See the Full Range

The unique design is the brainchild of Oxfordshire craftsman 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 gurus, sparked intrigue from the press and triumphed in trials.

Spork™ in the News

Andrew Davenport’s passion for organic gardening and promotion of the ‘Quick Return’ composting method has won him the title of Soil Association ‘Organic Hero’.

After many failures at making compost, Andrew discovered the ‘Quick Return’ method which was invented back in the 1930s by Maye Bruce, one of the founder members of the Soil Association. The fertile compost, which can be made in a matter of weeks, not only transformed his garden into a haven for growth and wildlife, it also inspired him to write a book and start up a business encouraging people to use this sustainable method.

Andrew’s book, ‘Quick Return Compost Making’ lovingly updates Maye Bruce’s user-friendly method of composting for the 21st century. Growing organically at home or at the allotment has become a high priority in many people’s lives as demonstrated by the fact that sales of veg seeds now outstrip those of flowers. Composting is as essential to keen veg growers as sunshine and rain.

Andrew said,

“The primary requirement for organic gardening and farming is the health and structure of the soil, get the basics right and the rest should follow on. The Soil Association is a charity formed to preserve and cultivate with utmost respect that most precious asset – the soil. I am so pleased to have been made a Soil Association ‘Organic Hero’ and be able to pass on the work of Maye Bruce.”

“Whilst Quick Return composting appears to be an old idea, in terms of the thousands of years of man cultivating the earth it is still relatively new – I hope by rewriting this book it will help bring it to the attention of the next wave of keen gardeners”

Three months ago, Mr Todd, who is based at Water Eaton, 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 Gardeners’ World Live Exhibition, spent half an hour at the stand of manufacturer DeWit, and then featured the innovative tools on the TV programme.

Now Mr Todd is expecting a sales surge for the product which he invented more than 10 years ago.

He 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 history of the Spork™ has been a roller coaster for Mr Todd.  When he invented it, it took off initially, but the company went bust in 1999.

After seven years in the wilderness, Dutch tool manufacturer DeWit agreed to make it again and now 1,000 tools a month are selling in Holland, as well as across Europe and even into the US.

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

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

Mr Todd, then 34, reminisced:

“I found that I kept changing over fork and spade, which 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 the advantage over a fork in that the tines don’t bend.”

This week, when I met him again, sitting in an incongruous looking armchair in a rented 15th-century barn in Water Eaton which acts as his operational HQ, he said:

“Your article really lit the fuse. I went on television three times, was in most of the nationals, and lots of gardening magazines.”

Back in 1999, the first Spork, made in China, hit the market. Then, after a pause: “The Spork limited company went bust about a year later.”

Now, after a seven-year slog which would have tested the metal ofthe most hardened entrepreneur, the good news is that a Dutch multinational manufacturer of garden tools, DeWit, is investing £500,000 in manufacturing plant to produce a whole range of Rob Todd equipment, all based on the Spork’s simultaneous cutting and digging principle.

The Dutch factory will make seven different tools, each in top-of-the range or cut-price versions, 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 at two Oxfordshire shops ahead of their launch worldwide – both Town Garden in North Parade, Oxford, and the Burford Garden Centre were indirectly connected with Mr Todd’s successful breakthrough in Holland.

Gazing through the doors of the ancient barn, Mr Todd shook his head reflectively:

“It simply could not have been harder. As Dyson himself said, it’s so daunting for inventors that it’s a wonder any ever do it. I reckon it has cost me at least £160,000 so far in simply keeping alive the intellectual rights, patents, worldwide design registration, and trademarks.

“I don’t own a house because everything I earn has gone into this instead of into a mortgage. It’s been a hand-to-mouth existence, to say the least. And the only stroke ofluck I’ve had came this year.”

The luck came during a casualconverstion with the owner of Town Garden in North Parade, Steve Jebbett, who suggested that Mr Todd should seek some marketing advice from Johnnie Vizor, the so-called ‘garden broker’ and former owner of upmarket London store the Chelsea Gardener, now living in Gloucester.

Mr Todd said:

“He has a passion for good quality and told me my old Chinese-made Spork was pretty ghastly.”

Mr Visor also told him he needed to produce a range of products rather than relying on just one.

So Mr Todd returned to his Water Eaton barn and set up an old terracotta barbecue, using a leafblower as bellows, to make a forge – and started creating his range of tools. A few days later he was back in Gloucester – and the garden broker was impressed, even offering to introduce him to the DeWit brothers. A couple of trips to Holland followed and the rest, as they say, is history.

Mr Todd said:

“I saw the brothers chatting among themselves and then they simply came and said they wanted to buy my design. Lawyers were then involved on agreeing a royalty.”

Unlike a writer dealing with a publisher, it seems, inventors receive no advance for their invention when it is accepted by a manufacturer.

Obviously, there is an element of trust involved.

Mr Todd said:

“I was completely green when I started out and soon found myself paying out £1,200 a month to a so-called professional who said he could promote my Spork.

That went on for about six months with no result at all. Then there was the continual business of keeping all the rights.

His advice to other inventors is set up a limited company, or you will lose your rights.

When his company went into liquidation owing the China manufacturers money, they tried take over his intellectual rights. Luckily these were technically worthless, so he was able to hang on to them, along with about 500 old-style Sporks that now live behind a covering blanket in the back of his barn. He still gets letter regularly from people wanting to know how they could get hold of Oil

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

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

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.”