THE best Christmas present I ever had was a plastic bucket and spade. It was red with a raised white pattern.

The spade was yellow. I was three at the time, and living in the middle of the Sahara desert. Yes, mine was a very large sand pit indeed.

This was the start of a lifetime of relevant and 'useful' presents. In my teenage years, as I was learning to drive, it was pieces of car panelling. It sounds very poetic when you say you got a pair of wings for Christmas. Mind you, I think I lost more than one boyfriend when they called by for me but were told, "she won't be long, she's just putting her wings on".

At 21, my parents bought me a rucksack and a state-of-the-art sleeping bag.

I don't think that they were trying to get rid of me, it was just that I was very much into the outdoor life then.

After moving house some years ago, I received a wheelbarrow full of interesting perennial plants. That also came with a cake in the shape of a terracotta pot, decorated with icing and with a plastic flower stuck in the top.

Last year, I was given two beautiful stainless steel pruning knives. They have never been out of my back pockets since, which can be quite embarrassing when you pop off to the gym after work and they drop onto the floor as you are changing. You spend the next ten minutes reassuring anyone nearby that you are not a vicious gang member but actually just a gardener who has forgotten to empty their pockets.

Plants have always been useful presents. Usually they are of a sort that you wouldn't normally buy yourself, either because of the cost or just because you hadn't thought of that particular plant. I can honestly say that I have never discarded or thrown out any plant that I have ever received.

There is always a place for everything somewhere. Once in the ground though, that plant is always associated with the giver. It is a constant reminder that someone loves us. It's often a case of "ooh, isn't Aunt Beryl's lily doing well". If the plant has a name that is close to your heart, then this can be even more precious.

I spent some time working on the Chatsworth Estate in Derbyshire. On my twenty-eighth birthday I was given a Chatsworth rose, a delicate pink small bush rose. Every time the blooms bud up and burst out of their retaining calyx, I am reminded of the good times I had on the estate.

On a more poignant note, we had a larger- than-life golden retriever that died quite young of kidney failure. She was buried in the garden. Her namesake rose 'Just Joey' now rambles away all over the site, and during the summer I make sure that there is at least one vase in the house with a Jojo rose beaming out of it.

Overall, people with an interest in gardening and horticulture usually make for trouble-free present buying. There are tools, books, plants, clothes, seeds or toiletries to choose from. The only difficulty is giving them away and not giving in to the temptation to swap the box of chocolates that you got from the office party for the lovely book on trees that you bought with honest intentions to give to your mother.

Brigid answers gardening questions and shares her gardening experiences every Sunday morning on BBC Radio Cleveland's garden hour between 11am and noon.

You can contact Brigid by emailing her at brigidpress67.freeserve.co.uk or writing to her care of Nature's World, Ladgate Lane, Acklam, Middlesbrough.

Published: 28/12/2002