Can someone suggest a lightweight mower please?

[Molly]

My husband suffered a stroke 2 months ago and is not likely to recover well enough to use our heavyweight petrol mower when the time comes to start cutting the grass again. I will be taking over the job, but due to arthiritis I need a lightweight machine (don't you just love the ageing process?). Can anyone suggest a good lightweight hover mower with a grass box, please? Feeling pretty sick about the whole thing, as the petrol mower is less than a year old, but thass life I s'pose, innit?

[richard p]

my mother inlaw found a hover mower to heavy to carry from the shed to the lawn, so got a little electric rotary on wheels.

[Clive.]

Hello Molly,

I can sympathise as my father is suffering with Parkinsons and is becoming increasingly less able to get out and about and to take part in his lifetimes gardening hobby...he is now main consultant...whilst inevitably mother finds herself doing more and more jobs as well as keeping dad going.

I am not able to quote exact new model types these days as I am 15+ years out of the mower world and also don't know the area/type of lawn you have to mow...but here are a few thoughts...

You mention a lightweight Hover Mower with grass collection.
They are lifted on a cushion of air blown down from a fan above the blade and move quite easily on the lawn but only if it is kept quite short... the air drawn into the mower is used to collect up the clippings from behind the mower into an integral grassbox which is then lifted out to tip the clippings out.
A couple of points come to mind with regard these types...as Richard correctly points out they need to be carried from garage/shed to the lawn and they are mains electric powered so there is the cable trailing behind to deal with. They will not hover over traditional gulley lawn edges. Cutting height adjustment if required was always by undoing the blade and adding/removing spacers....I summise that may still be the case.??.

Wheeled electric rotary mowers can be easily wheeled to the lawn. If you have traditional lawn edges you would be best to find a type which has a roller at the rear on which to support the mower as you mow up to the lawn edge. There is still the mains cable to watch out for....always use a circuit breaker at the plug in point.

About the time I left the mower world Cordless Battery powered Mowers were starting to return to manufacturers ranges. The benefit here is that there is no trailing mains cable to worry about. As time moves on charging and length of use times have no doubt improved to produce a quite useable viable alternative to mains electrics and their awkward trailed cables.

There are also a few cylinder type electric mowers...the cylinder mower being the traditional finer cut machine... but the rotary mower tends to win these days if the lawn misses a cut by a few days as a rotary mower set high can get the job back in check again.

If it is a too large area for the small electric then there are petrol mowers which have electric start, they cost a few pounds more than a basic pull start model...it is often the pull starting of the mower that is the hardest bit relative to the actual mowing.

It may be best to visit a local machinery dealer to see what they can suggest...have a look at machines they stock, they will have come across the application before. Check out how easy/difficult the machines are to move and operate, check the feel and hold of the switches and levers and also how easy it is to fit and to carry the grassbox.

For the next few weeks the machinery dealers will still be quite quiet allowing better browsing of their wares...but once the first mower is heard everyone starts and the machinery world then goes manic.!!! I am not sure these days if the dealers can be viable with the smaller machines relative to the "sheds"/internet..15 year ago we were having to concentrate on selling a top quality, if slightly dearer, small mower rather than those from the then deemed market leaders.

Another viable option may be to see if there is a local handyperson who could take on your mowing...this may mean that your lawn is perhaps not mown on the optimum dry day as they will have others on their round.. but it could free you to be able to tackle the less chore type aspects of gardening....although I add that I have always enjoyed mowing.!!

Sorry not to be more specific with regard makes and models.

All the best,
Clive.

[Molly]

I have a large area of grass to cut, arranged on 3 levels (2 at the back of the house, 1 at the front). To make it even more interesting, the biggest area has a brook at the bottom which floods twice a year. Thus the lawn (if you can call it that) is uneven and always very moist - oh, and it has 4 trees in it and artistically curved shrub borders on 3 sides! I could replace the top 2 lawns with gravel and/or growing beds, but The Long Arm Of The Law dictates that I must leave the lower level intact or they will throw me into Shrewsbury Jail. As I need to lug the mower down 4 sets of uneven stone steps (avoiding retaining walls each side), the comments about hover mowers were very useful, thanks to both for replying.