Committed, dirty-hands gardeners are never embarrassed to go out for a Saturday night of fun with a little bit of dirt still tracing the lines in their fingers and palms. They wear those telltale signs of how they spent the day without a hint of concern.
The rest of us, though, want to hide the evidence. Sure, we’ll thrust our hands deeply into the soil any chance we get, but after we’re done we want to look freshly scrubbed-as if all that gardening got done on its own.
It’s not always easy, because gardening really grinds the dirt in. Ordinary soaps sometimes can’t stand up to the task of cleaning hands that have been digging, planting or composting. Soapmakers know this, which is why they’ve cooked up lots of varieties of hand soaps purportedly designed with gardeners in mind.
Do they work? Or, the better question: Do they work any better than non-gardeners soaps? To find out, we enlisted three Chicago-area gardeners and gave them samples of a dozen different soaps. We asked them to get their hands good and dirty 12 times, each time cleaning up with a different soap.
The trio we persuaded to wash their hands over and over in service to their fellow gardeners are: Dr. Ray Konior, a Loyola University plastic surgeon and dermatologist who gardens with his wife, Nancy, in Palos Park; landscaper Rosalind Reed, whose firm and home are in Oak Park; and Paula Stopka, a lawyer and dedicated gardener who lives in Geneva.
They scored each soap on four attributes: how well it cleaned, its fragrance, its restoring or curing effect on roughened skin, and its overall value–whether it’s worth its price, given its performance on the first three attributes. For each attribute, the testers scored on a five-point scale. Each soap, then, was eligible for up to 20 points from each tester, a combined total of 60 points.
The soaps came from assorted garden stores, a beauty-products boutique and even a mainstream grocery store. They range in price from $1.15 to $20. Some are delicate little tidbits wrapped in ribbon, while others are blocky bars in drab wrappers.
Along with soaps made just for gardeners, we included Lava because it’s marketed as a soap for working hands of all kinds, though it isn’t targeted exclusively to gardeners.
The winner: Gardeners Soap with loofah, a Canadian-made product that has small pieces of rough loofah sponge scattered throughout the bar. It racked up 45 of the possible 60 points. Stopka, who gave this one a score of 17, was impressed that “the loofah particles embedded in the soap cleaned fairly well but weren’t that abrasive.”
Stopka gave the soap 4 points for fragrance; Reed disagreed, giving it just 2 and saying it smelled “minty, like bad car freshener.” Overall, Reed gave this soap just 11 points, but Konior seconded Stopka’s higher regard for the soap, giving it 17 points.
Other high-scorers were Lava (the lone “non-gardeners” soap among the bunch), with 44 points, and Terrebonne Gardeners Hand Soap, with 43.
The lowest score, 26 of a possible 60 points, went to the Gardener’s Remedy Hand Scrub in a jar, from Smith & Hawken. It got a score of 14 from Konior, who was the most lenient of the judges, but just 7 points from Reed and 5 from Stopka. The latter barely could contain her distaste for this entry, describing it as a “gritty residue in a gelatinous mixture that left hands feeling tingly. (The fragrance) is too perfumy.”
Not far above that soap was the other product that comes in a jar, Crabtree & Evelyn’s Gardeners Hand Scrub, which got 27 points. Generally, each of the judges could find something good to say about every soap. But Reed couldn’t come up with anything to like about this one, giving it a score of 0 because it “takes off a layer of skin and leaves hands gritty and powdery.” In her opinion, its fragrance was “the worst.”
Stopka believes that many of the soaps suffer from trying too hard. “They are trying to do two jobs that are essentially antithetical–using abrasives to scour out ingrained dirt while softening and soothing,” she said.
So, do you need anything beyond an ordinary bar of soap?
“I still think a scrub brush and a regular bar of soap out-clean all of the samples,” Stopka said, echoing her fellow testers. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t rule out the idea that many of these soaps would make a nice gift from one gardener to another.
SOAP SOURCES
Here are the stores that carry the gardener’s soaps our panel tested:
Apiana bee-pollen soap, $4 at Terrain, 2542 N. Halsted St., 773-549-0888.
Crabtree & Evelyn Gardeners Scrub Bar, $10, and Crabtree & Evelyn Gardeners Hand Scrub (in a jar), $20, both at Crabtree & Evelyn stores (call 800-272-2873 for store locations).
Gardeners Apricot Kernel Hand Scrub, $8.99 at The Chalet Nursery & Garden Shops, 3132 Lake Ave., Wilmette, 847-256-0561.
Gardeners Hand Soap, $5 at The Urban Gardener, 1006 W. Armitage Ave., 773-477-2070.
Gardeners Loofah Soap, $3.99 at Alexander’s Gifts, 485 Main St., Glen Ellyn, 630-790-2007; Bibelot, 3349 N. Southport Ave., 773-348-6365; The Chalet Nursery & Garden Shops, 3132 Lake Ave., Wilmette, 847-256-0561; Flowerwood, U.S. Highway 14 and Illinois Highway 176, Crystal Lake, 815-459-6200; Katscilla’s Garden, 212 S. 3rd St., Geneva, 630-208-8110; Mangel & Co., 421 Robert Parker Coffin Rd., Long Grove, 847-634-3731; Pasquesi Home & Farm Suppliers, 1045 S. Waukegan Rd., Lake Forest, 847-234-6776; and The Trumpet Vine, 12228 S. Harlem Ave., Palos Heights, 708-448-0889.
Gardeners Remedy Hand Scrub, $18 at Smith & Hawken, 1780 N. Marcey St., 312-266-1988; or mail order: 800-776-3336.
Gardeners Soap (green bar made in Canada), $2.95, and Gardeners Soap (brown wrapper, made by Charleston Soap and Candle), $3.95 both at The Planter’s Palette, 28W571 Roosevelt Rd., Winfield, 630-293-1140, and Kinsman Catalog, 800-733-4146.
Glorious Gardens Gentle Pumice Soap, $2.99 at The Chalet Nursery & Garden Shops, 3132 Lake Ave., Wilmette, 847-256-0561.
Lava, $1.15 at all major grocery chains.
Terrebonne soap, $5 at The Urban Gardener, 1006 W. Armitage Ave., 773-477-2070.
