For Gardeners

Jakoti hand shears are the perfect tool for a range of garden tasks including topiary, lawn edges, cutting back perennials and much more. 

More efficient than the usual double bow design, the carbon-steel blades are amazingly sharp and cut cleanly with the minimum of effort. 

The ergonomically designed handles are comfortable for long periods of use and the low tension spring makes them easy to operate. Hand crafted from high quality carbon-steel, the self sharpening design of the blades ensures a clean cut every time.

Made using traditional metalwork skills and exclusively imported, these shears have been refined and developed over the last 40 years and are unmatched for design quality and performance.

What do people say?

The Telegraph | Best Hand Shears for Topiary
“These are great to have in your holster; they were extremely sharp straight from the off and very accurate and easy to use. They’ve got a nice sharp point, which is what you look for in topiary shears; you can get into really small areas. These are great for doing spirals and pyramid topiary, especially box. Also great for cutting down grasses, the herbaceous border and trimming lavender.”

The Telegraph | Helen Yemm
“M.L. asks me to identify the interesting-looking scarlet-handled snips, as she calls them, that I was holding in a photograph that appeared here on February 27. They are my beloved Jakoti one-handed shears. They were sent to me to try for a magazine feature and I have been almost literally attached to them ever since. I use them for all sorts of jobs, including topiary (better even than my trusty kitchen scissors of yore), and for neat and speedy cutting down of herbaceous plants and grasses”

The Financial Times | Jane Owen
Anyone mistaken enough to grow ornamental grasses should be starting to think about how to tidy them up now we’ve come to the end of their winter ‘display’ of gloomy brown heaps topped with bits of seed head. Sheep shears are great for the job but Jakoti hand shears, a new tool from Greece, are even better. For those more familiar with secateurs, hand or sheep shears have straight blades which ping back as soon as you have used them – just as secateurs do. The difference is that they are lighter, longer and handy for lighter cutting jobs – like grasses. Given that I have never grown ornamental grasses, I have never had to tidy up their lamentable forms. Instead, I use conventional sheep shears to tidy up topiaries and perennials. As far as I am concerned, the only downside to these is that the blades part company or warp when faced with larger jobs such as cutting a rose stem. No longer. I have been converted to Jakotis, which look like heavy-duty, long kitchen scissors. Like sheep shears, they are used with one hand, allowing the other to lift or steady stems in need of cutting. Unlike sheep shears, they slice through three-year-old box stems without difficulty. Jakotis also cut through grasses which defeat secateurs and their 14cm blades will deal with more stems in one go than secateurs can ever manage.

The Telegraph | ``Best Buy`` Garden Shears
Easy to spot, even in undergrowth. A very basic design, but made to last a lifetime. They cut cleanly and precisely and have real quality, weight and presence. A pleasure to use – the handles are nicely shaped to fit the hand.

The English Garden | Helen Yemm | ``Helen's favourite`` topiary shears
“As soon as I slipped the integral clip off the end of the shiny, scarlet handles of this beautifully balanced shear, I knew I had found something special. Handmade in Greece – very much in the Japanese style – and newly available in Britain, these are just lovely. The blades are super sharp, the action is smooth and sprung like a good pair of secateurs, the handles have comfortable “hips” at the top – and, of course, as regular readers will know, I am a complete sucker for bright-red, un-losable tools.”

Eastern Daily Press | Alan Gray
“I had read about a pair of hand shears that were extremely useful for cutting back all those faded and jaded perennials we have in our borders right now. Any gardener will know that to do this job efficiently in the autumn is not without its trials.Secateurs won’t cut through every stem as some of them are too succulent and merely squash. Scissors work to a point, but are not really robust enough and they are not particularly user-friendly on the hands of the person working with them. What’s really needed here is a simple pair of efficient hand shears and I have found them. They are called Jakoti Hand Shears and are ideal for cutting back, trimming, dead-heading, topiary work and many general gardening tasks. I find the stories behind some of these ‘finds’ fascinating. A pair of these shears were bought from a hardware store on a remote Greek island three years ago by a holidaymaker and given to her mother. So satisfied was she with the shears that she told her son about them and he, on mother’s recommendation, began importing them so that we can all now enjoy them.If all this sounds too good to be true you haven’t heard it all yet. The handles are ergonomically designed so that they are comfortable to use even for those with small hands and the low tension spring between the handles makes them easy to operate. They are made from high quality carbon steel and the blades are self-sharpening, although not self-cleaning, which you must do regularly. All that is needed is to wash them in hot soapy water, dry them and then wipe over with an oily rag.

Garden Answers | Hilary Scott | 4 Stars
“These shears were comfortable to use, well made and nicely balanced. The long sharp blades meant it was easy to get into difficult spaces and make precise cuts. As well as shaping topiary, they were useful for trimming other plants such as heathers and lavender that needed bringing back into shape gently. And while colour is not the most important thing, the bright red handles were very attractive”.

The Telegraph | Elspeth Thompson
“Jakoti hand shears, pruning tools imported from Greece, are great for cutting soft, herbaceous plants such as irises and grasses. The shears have a low-tension spring that makes them easy and comfortable to use …”