Buying guides
Which one, for the lawn you actually have
A hub compares one family against itself. A guide takes one question instead — a budget, a first mower for somebody who has never owned one, what has to be bought before a robot can even be installed — and answers it with a short ordered list and the reasoning that produced that order.
- Mowers
Choosing a mower for a small lawn
Six mowers with decks of 30 to 33 cm, chosen because a wide deck spends itself on manoeuvring in a garden full of beds, paths and corners.
- Mowers
Choosing a mower for a large lawn
Six mowers of 40 cm and wider, with the one figure that decides a large lawn — whether the machine drives itself or you push it.
- Mowers
Cutting a lawn quietly
Six ways to mow without annoying anybody — two with no motor at all, two robots with published decibel figures, and two cordless mowers.
- Robot mowers
Robot mowers that need no perimeter wire
Six wire-free robots, sorted by what they publish about where they can actually work — slope, passage width and stated area.
- Scarifiers
Renovating a lawn in spring
Six scarifiers compared on the figure that matters — working depth — and the sequence that turns scarifying into a lawn rather than a mess.
- Leaf clearing
Clearing autumn leaves off a lawn
Three blowers and three sweepers, and the honest division of labour between them — one works in wind and collects, the other reaches gravel and wet paving.
- Garden pumps
Choosing a garden pump
Six booster pumps compared on suction height and head — the two figures that decide whether a pump works at all, and why flow and head never happen together.
- Water timers
Watering a garden while you are away
Five tap timers, from a mechanical dial to Wi-Fi and Zigbee — and the failure nobody advertises, which is that none of them tells you it has stopped.
- Garden shredders
Choosing a garden shredder
Six shredders from 2500 W mains to 420 cm³ petrol, and the one distinction that decides everything — a roller crushes slowly, a blade chops fast.
- Tillers
Preparing ground for a new lawn
Six tillers from 30 to 85 cm, and the depth question that matters — a lawn needs a broken surface, not a dug field.
- Mowers
Mowing a sloping lawn
Four robots with published slope limits from 45 to 50 per cent, and two self-propelled petrol mowers — plus the one figure almost nobody publishes.
- Lawn care
The machines a new lawn needs, in the order it needs them
One machine per job across the first two years of a lawn — prepare, cut, water, renovate, clear — with the jobs that need no machine at all named as such.