Choosing the right lawnmower

Apr 12 2008 By Hannah Stephenson

As the weather promises to warm up, gardeners will be setting their lawnmower blades high to give their grass the first cut of the season. But if your mower is past its best, what is the best?

There are many mowers on the market, but do you need a rotary or a cylinder, an electric or a petrol? There are even robotic types on the market, which claim to do the job for you.

Electric mowers are fine if you have a mains electric socket handy and enough cable needed to cover the ground. They also tend to be cheaper and are easy to use.

The disadvantage is that the trailing cable can be a nuisance as you must be careful not to run over it and it can restrict your mobility in a large garden.

Make sure you use a residual current device, so that the current is switched off automatically if there is a fault or an accident.

You may be better off with a petrol motor if you want the freedom to cover a lot of ground, although they are heavier. But this means that the roller (if you have one) will produce stripes on the lawn.

Remember, though, to take the mower off the lawn for refuelling, as spilled petrol will kill the grass.

Cylinder mowers have a series of moving blades fixed around a cylinder, passing over a fixed bottom blade to create a scissor-like cut. Efficiency is determined by the number of blades on the cylinder and how fast they rotate.

Cylinder mowers tend to give the cleanest cuts and are ideal for maintaining top quality lawns but are generally unsuitable for long, coarse or wiry grass.

They are quiet so you won't annoy the neighbours and will keep you fit while pulling and pushing the machine over a small lawn.

With rotary mowers, blades rotate horizontally, supported either by wheels or, in the case of hover mowers, by riding on a cushion of air. They are more suitable for longer, rougher grass areas and slopes. They are not designed for straight-line mowing and won't stripe your lawn.

I would personally go for a mower with a grass collection box, as leaving clippings on the lawn is messy, they are often trodden into the house and clumps of clippings left on the lawn cut off light and air.

There are mulch mowers on the market, which chop the clippings into tiny pieces and blast them firmly down the lawn, where they will rot down to feed the grass and conserve moisture, although they still leave you with the irritation of treading grass into the house.