CENTRE — When Cherokee County native Jerry Hart had both knees replaced in February 2011, he soon realized his lifelong love of gardening was in danger of becoming little more than a treasured memory.

“April arrived and I needed to be digging in the dirt,” said Hart, 64. “The new knees said, 'I don't think so'.”

After a blossom-free 2011 and a nearly equally disappointing 2012—“I still could not get down on my knees,” Hart said—the engineer with a commercial facility in Attalla decided to take his horticultural hardships into his own hands.

“It took me several days of moping around to remember that I have been in the manufacturing business since 1970,” Hart laughed.

Hart's love of the outdoors first blossomed as a young child, working in the vegetable garden with his grandmother.

“When I was three she would let me crawl down the middles of the rows and drop seeds, and place the tomatoes and cabbage and pepper plants,” Hart said. “By the end of that gardening season I was hooked for life.”

For the next 12 years, Hart spent the springtime and summer months working in the garden.

“I would spend countless days with her learning to garden and about how to love and how to live a worthwhile life,” he said. “There were days when a dollar was hard to find but there was always plenty of food to eat.”

These days, Hart spends whatever downtime he can find “competing” with his wife over whose half of their yard is most beautiful.

“She takes the front and I get the back,” he said. “I know, I know. But I have a big water feature and a unique deck.”

Before Hart created his own answer for bending over and digging holes in his back yard, he tried a few other implements to see how he might be able to improve on them.

“Post hole diggers make a hole that is too big for most plants so I searched online for something else, without any success,” he said. “I tried augers, hoes, shovels, none of which worked well in a flower bed.”

Hart quickly realized he needed a set of small post hole diggers with the ability to conquer a variety of soil conditions. Pretty soon, he had a prototype in his hands.

“I did what most engineers do. I designed, tested, manufactured, tested some more and eventually developed a manufacturing and quality-control process,” he said. “They're made right here in Alabama—in Attalla.”

Hart's testing showed that he needed two sizes of diggers for various plants. The handles are made from 1/8-inch steel tubing, the same material used to build roll cages for NASCAR stock cars. All the parts on the business end are made of stainless steel.

“Run over the blade with your truck and you'll probably need a new tire,” Hart said. “The diggers will be OK.”

After painting and polishing, the final step in the process is the application of a shiny “Made in U.S.A.' decal.

“This tool is not like the one you might buy at Lowe's or Home Depot that will only last a few years,” Hart said. “My diggers cost a little more, but they will last a lifetime. Or two.”

Hart said he had no designs on marketing the tools on a massive scale. But as friends and family heard about his unique, long-lasting plant hole diggers, he began to reach out around the Southeast, mostly at home and garden trade shows, and has already sold several hundred sets.

“My focus has primarily been aimed at gardeners my age,” Hart said. “But I now have a third design, based on requests from professional landscapers and growers who have seen my other two designs.”

Hart's plant hole diggers are available in Centre at the Flower Mart. For more information call 256-393-3900 or send e-mail to jhart@tds.net.