I don’t usually get garden equipment to test, but I was happy that the Gilmour Hose Company thought of me as a tester. Gilmour sent me their gray Flexogen Premium Duty hose, guaranteed not to kink.

We have been using the hose all summer at the Greenfield house, dragging it around the garden, around the house out to  the hellstrip to water all the new plantings. While there have been a couple of heavy rains there have been long spells of hot, dry weather and the hose has gotten heavy use. I confess that when I have bought hoses in the past I have not  thought about construction statistics, just choosing by what looked sturdy, and sometimes just because it was very inexpensive . That last is nearly always a bad idea.  The Gilmour hose, made in the USA of recycled material, has eight layers of spiral-wrap and knit-wrap nylon that makes it strong but very flexible. There is also a layer of oxygen infused foam to increase this flexibility. The result of this construction is a hose that is flexible but not kinkable. My old orange hose above has been quite a good hose, but it definitely kinks up which means walking back along the hose to find the kink and untangle it – an irritation and time waster.

It never ceases to amaze me how wound up the hose gets when I am moving it around the garden – see unstaged photo above – but the Gilmour hose has lived up to its PR. The only thing I would say is that it isn’t as lightweight as I thought it would be. Still, I feel about this hose the way I did when we bought a cast iron Christmas tree stand,  “the last Christmas tree stand you’ll ever need.” I don’t think I will ever need to replace the Gilmour hose. Indeed it is backed by a lifetime warantee. Durability is in the construction of the hose, and in the crush resistant brass couplings.

The hose came with a heavy duty spray nozzle that is controlled just by twisting its ‘nose’ changing the flow from a powerful stream to a gentle mist.   I don’t know the proper name for the final part of the nozzle. Gilmour makes a range of sturdy watering products including soaker hoses, timers, and sprinklers.