Sneeboer Small Rose Fork

A fork of the right size with stainless steel tines that carefully loosen and aerate the earth in the pot without damaging the sensitive network of roots of the roses. You can also poke deep holes with the tines in the densely matted balls of roots to insert rose fertiliser; the relevant constituents are easily absorbed this way.

For more than 100 years, the family of the West Frisian blacksmith Jaap Sneeboer has been supplying their Dutch fellow citizens, known to be incessantly engaged in farming, dyking and horticulture, with the tools they need to do so. At Sneeboer, they use two different types of stainless steel for their traditional Frisian horticultural tools: a tougher one (with higher degrees of alloying) for the springs and grommets holding the handle and low-alloy steel that responds better to forging for the functional parts in the narrow sense. They weld the individual construction elements together, then ground and polish them by hand.

It has long become common practice to stamp and roll garden tools. However, we hardly need to describe the difference; we want to point out that forging is the only way to deal with a tool in all its details and strengthen the material in those parts where this is necessary for functional reasons.