Do I need a Ride on lawn mower

HelpMeMove

Hi,

We completed earlier this week on our house and we need a lawn mower (moved from a 1st floor flat).

The garden is 135ft long and 50ft wide, I'd say about 70% of that is lawn, the remainder is trees and shrubs.

It's failry flat but its very mossy, like a thick carpet. I'm looking at petrol rotary mowers but will I regret it later? should I spend the bit extra and go for a ride on now?

Recommendations of makes and models of either type of mower will be appreciated too.

Thanks.

olly300

Depends.

What do you intend to do in your garden? Do you intend to redesign it and put in flower beds and areas to grow fruit and veg?

I would work out what you want to do before spending money on a lawn mower.

HelpMeMove

We plan on leaving it as it is, just maintaining it. Not really green fingered.

hardpressed

Rather depends on how fit you are and how much time you've got to spend cutting the grass. What the the people who live there now use?

OogaBooga

I don't regret buying mine - such a labour saver. Mine is a Countax, seems built to last.

dora37

Go for the ride on....how much more fun will cutting the grass be?:rotfl:

dryan

B&Q do a good range starting from around £900 although can't vouch if they are any good. We brought a Castel XE6 from cheapmowers.com - i think it was around £800 and haven't had any problems (but you notice the difference in long grass). Obvious with petrol prices going up there are going to be increased running costs with these.

Ride on is fun in a forrest gump type way, but where is the exercise? Just don't go spending extra on gym membership now you are driving round the garden!

bagpuss_fan

Our garden is the same size as yours and for a whole year I kept saying "why do we need one of those when we've got a flymo?". What a stupid question! It used to take me 4 hours to cut the grass (a lot of ours is quite mossy coz it's under trees too).

Our ride-on was the best time consuming device I have ever bought (probably because we have a 13 year old son, i've never had such short grass and he even does stripes!).

We ordered the basic one from B & Q with the addition of a grass collector, the company that makes them then phoned us and said it was really only meant for "meadow grass" and wouldn't cut a lawn short enough! B & Q apparently always forget to mention this!

Anyway, we changed the order, and then went into B & Q and paid the extra, it wasn't that much coz the next model up came with grass collector! We've had it 2 years now, and had no problems at all mechanically, we did lhave a tyre mysteriously "fall off" but this was because my son thought doing doughnuts on a rough piece of mud/hardcore at the top of the garden was a good idea! (we could see the evidence from an upstairs window! lol

Would definately recommend one. Happy mowing!

Lord_Gardener

That's not very big!! A petrol rotary something like this will do the job fine:

http://www.screwfix.com/prods/25985/Landscaping/Landscaping-Power-Tools/Lawnmowers/Push-Victus-Rotary-Petrol-Lawn-Mower-41cm-4Hp

HelpMeMove

Thanks all for your advice.

Love that story of doughnuts bagpuss lol.

I'm a petrol head so having a ride on is another toy, I'm just trying to justify it. Would prefer the exercise but time just seems such a short commodity nowadays.

If I were to go for a push, is the rotary the better option for my mossy lawn?

Daz1

I also have a large garden and I am told by neighbours that the people previously had a ride on mower. I have an electric mower (with long lead and extension cord). I tend to keep one area of my lawn "manicured" and nicely trimmed and fed but leave the bottom of the garden to grow a bit longer and do it with a strimmer very so often to keep it as a bit of a "Haven" for birdlife and insects etc. I quite enjoy mowing the lawn by hand and wouldn't like to use up a lot of storage in my shed for a ride on mower. Don't forget, you will need to store the petrol too or go to the filling station every time you plan to mow....good luck whatever you decide