Now you have got the garden down to grass you have time to get on with the other pressing jobs about the house while you think about what you are going to do with the garden. Obviously the new lawn will need some attention during the summer and not just cutting it – but we will look at that first. When you walk into the shop you will be presented with a bewildering array of options but they can be split up into a few simple choices. How do they cut the grass and how are they powered. There are several mechanisms which can cut the grass but here we only need to consider two types.

Cylinder mowers

These are the more expensive type and cut the grass by a rotating cylinder of blades over a fixed bottom blade, so they cut like a pair of scissors. The blades fixed around the cylinder form one of

the scissor blades and a fixed flat blade at the bottom forms the other half. The blades have to be kept adjusted so they just pass one another. Because the cylinder is horizontal the motor has to be mounted behind it needing a system of belts or gears to transfer the power between them; adding to the cost. Normally the mowers have a pair of rollers, front and back, to support it and the height of the cut is normally by adjusting the front roller. Cylinder mowers are more expensive to buy and maintain but give a better finish (the more blades on the cylinder the finer the cut – not the faster the cylinder turns) and last longer.

Rotary mowers

These cut by spinning a horizontal blade parallel to the lawn and the motor is mounted straight on top of the blade, with it just bolted onto the end of the drive shaft. This makes them cheaper to build but because the motor is running at full speed, to give the blade the speed to cut the grass, they tend to have a shorter live. Also because they basically knock the top of the grass off they do not give as good a finish as a cylinder mower. They are supported by either wheels, wheels and a roller, or air. Ones supported by air have a fixed cutting height while the others’ cutting height is adjusted by the wheels and/or rollers. The blades of the mowers are shaped either to blow air down to provide a cushion of air if this supports the mower or suck the air up to blow the grass cutting into a collection bag. Rotary mowers never pick up the grass cuttings as well as a cylinder mower, and are very prone to clogging if the grass is wet. Some mowers, called mulching mowers, are designed to chop the grass finely and return it into the lawn. These can work very well and save the work of disposing of the grass cuttings but only work if a little grass is being removed at a time, otherwise there is too much grass cuttings to be lost back into the lawn.

Petrol mowers

Both types of mower can be powered by petrol engines and these have the advantage that you don’t have the problem of trailing leads or recharging batteries. They do have a lot more moving parts, so the chance of them breaking down is greater, and they are more expensive to buy and maintain.

Eletric mowers

Again both types of mower can be powered by electric motors and these can be either battery of mains. With mains electricity you have the problem of extension leads trailing across the lawn as you cut it and the power loss with long cable runs which makes using them a long way from the house power supply impractical. Batteries on the other hand will only run so long until they need recharging which can take a long time and rechargeable batteries only have a limited life before they will no longer hold their charge.