Collection: Haws Watering Cans

Haws Watering Cans

Haws has been making watering cans since 1886, which makes it the oldest watering can company in the world, and every one is still made in England. John Haws was a customs officer who spent twenty-four years in Mauritius trying and failing to grow vanilla, and he blamed the clumsy French cans of the day. His answer was a second handle, a tilting one at the back separate from the lifting handle, and the patent he took out in 1886 is essentially the can you still buy. He won a Royal Horticultural Society medal in 1911 and exhibited at the first Chelsea Flower Show the following year.

Nine pieces are here, from the smaller indoor cans around seventy dollars up to the two-gallon outdoor can at the top of the range. The Fazeley Flow is the indoor one: a two-pint can with a curved spout for watering pots precisely, and it pours a direct stream rather than a spray, so it goes where you point it instead of over the windowsill. It comes in a run of colours, with the brass version the dearest of that shape.

The Classic Jug is the other indoor shape, three pints, in cream or graphite. It is the simpler design of the two and the one most people start with. The Warley Fall is for outside, two gallons of galvanised steel with a long reach for getting into a border without treading on the bed, and it is built for a lifetime of use outdoors.

What people buy them for is the balance. A Haws is weighted so it still tips accurately when it is full, which is the thing cheap cans get wrong, and it is why they end up being kept for decades rather than replaced. The brass and copper versions develop a patina over the years rather than corroding.

For a houseplant owner the smallest Fazeley Flow is plenty, and the wider garden range covers the tools that go with it. For a garden, the Warley Fall. If there is a particular can, size or colour you are looking for that you are not able to find on the website, reach out to us and we will be glad to help.