He said the officers were shouting at him to “drop the knife”.
“I said I didn’t have a knife and they told me to drop the knife again,” he said.
"So I dropped my Japanese hand gardening sickle and a handful of privet that I just cut off the hedge.
“They turned me around, pushed me up against my house, handcuffed me, then put me in the back of a van.”
Mr Rowe was carrying a Japanese-made trowel in its sheath, a small Japanese gardener’s sickle and a peeling knife, along with a trug of vegetables.
He said the peeling knife was his late grandmother’s, the sickle had been purchased a decade ago and the trowel, which has a short blade and wooden handle, was a present.
He added that he had not been aware of any warnings about carrying the tools in public.
However, since his arrest, a warning has appeared on the trowel manufacturer’s website.
It said customers needed “to familiarise themselves with offensive weapons law before carrying the tool in public”.
I’ve got a Hori Hori and it had a sharp edge once - until it got used as a trowel to dig a small hole. Now it’s just a fancy trowel lol.
I use a Hori Hori “garden knife” alla time. Super useful tool. AND jamming a blunt, yet pointy tool into someones soft underbelly would not be pleasant, and could result in injury / death. Don’t carry it in a fashion that with a fall would result in this happening to you. Gardening can be dangerous to the ill informed.
What he did wasn’t against the law. You can carry a knife in public if you have good reason to. The man was carrying a gardening trowel and was caught with a sickle cutting a hedge and holding a basket of vegetables. He was literally caught gardening. It was crystal clear that he had good reason.