A TOOL amnesty is to take place at three garden centres in Comet country next month as they invite the county’s green-fingered folk to trade in their old and broken gardening tools for new ones.

Garden centres in Hitchin, Stevenage and Codicote will be holding a ‘Garden Tool Amnesty’ in aid of The Conservation Foundation’s ‘Tools Shed’ programme, which gives free garden tools, repaired in a number of UK prisons, to schools and community gardens.

This year’s initiative will be running from Saturday, February 12, until Sunday, February 27.

Chris Swales, manager at the Cambridge Road-based Hitchin Garden Centre, said: “We will give anyone who brings in their old gardening tools during the Garden Tool Amnesty a 20 per cent off voucher to redeem against any new gardening tools from our Fiskars, Yeoman, Joseph Bentley, Wolf, Burgeon and Ball and Felco ranges.

“The initiative applies to tools such as trowels, spades, hand and garden forks, hoes, good old-fashioned garden rakes and lawn rakes, but not tools which are powered by electricity or are petrol-driven.”

The Conservation Foundation’s director, David Shreeve, said: “Thanks to the help of the garden centres, our prison partners have received plenty of tools to repair and these in turn have found good homes in school and community gardens. With such a great supply of tools, The Foundation is now busy fundraising to enable us to work with more prisons around the country.”

For more information on how to give and receive tools, visit www.conservationfoundation.co.uk or call 020 7591 3111.