#5 English Garden Trug

Royal Sussex garden and flower trugs are a quintessential English garden tool. It's a useful and attractive place to store your everyday garden tools, carry your freshly harvested cut flowers and vegetables, load up for a picnic, or bring to your local farm stand instead of a shopping bag. Trugs are lightweight, strong and durable.  They age beautifully, looking better and better after each year of use.  

Here's a bit of their history....

Trugs began with the Anglo Saxons, when trugs or "trogs" were used to measure grains and liquids and came in different sizes, each numbered.  They were made of solid timber and quite heavy.  In the 1800's, Thomas Smith of East Sussex, England, re-invented the trug, making it lightweight by using Sweet Chestnut and Cricket Bat Willow. His design caught the eye of Queen Victoria at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and she became a patron. Thomas Smith was awarded a Royal Warrant and his trugs became known as Royal Sussex Trugs.  

While trugs are no longer needed as a unit of measurement, they continue to be made for gardeners.  Another royal warrant was secured by Royal Sussex Trugs from the Royal Estate at Windsor in the 1980's, where they are currently in use. The present owners have been making trugs by hand, using Thomas Smith's same methods, since 1989. Each trug is signed on the underside by its maker.  

Garden Trug #5 - 15.5" wide x 8.5" deep x 8.5" high

Made in England of sustainably sourced Sweet Chestnut and Cricket Bat Willow