 This month I'm loving... Mean green mowing machines. Well mow me down! Spring is in the air, and with it the smell of freshly grown grass – which whets the appetite of most gardeners to make it freshly mown grass. If you lust after the latest 'must-have' garden gadget, get your hankie ready 'cause you'll be drooling over the new range of robot lawn mowers. What could be easier? Flip the 'ON' switch and retire to a sun lounger with a G&T – at least until the next shower rolls in. You needn't even break a sweat. This is the sort of gardening even I could excel at!
If you don't want your thumb to be the extent of your green-ness, test drive the new solar hybrid electric robot mower (above) from Husqvarna. Dear, yes, (around £2000) but potentially cheaper over time than a lawn service (especially if rumours of eastern European immigrants deserting our dirty work are true) and surely more ethical (if you've been paying substandard wages). This is not your garden-variety lawn mower. If you have green electricity – and the sun shines for you – this glossy beauty could help you cut back on the pricey petrol – and the carbon (it's even assembled in the UK). It's suitable for areas up to 2,100 square metres, so perhaps slightly OTT for the typical inner-city or suburban patch. I've never understood the need for each house in a street to have its own massive mower in the shed. Perhaps after the success of car clubs we'll see a new phenomenon: shed-sharing clubs. Sacrilege? A man's shed may be his castle, but if it wasn't full of lawn equipment, he'd have even more room for... for whatever it is he gets up to in there. Sharing equipment would help to reduce waste – and maybe even  encourage neighbours to talk to each other again.
On the other hand, why lounge on your backside while a robot mows the lawn, then drive to the gym to spend an hour on a cross trainer? Just cancel your gym membership and get a push mower (for the price of a month's fees). The snazzy Husqvarna Novocut 64 has five blades to help keep your lawn green and groomed without consuming any fuel – unless you count a hearty breakfast. Even better, it's a snip at approx £75-80 (plus £15 for grass catcher). It recently won the Which? Best Buy for a medium-sized lawn.
If that sounds like too much hard work, maybe it's time for a look at the big picture. Perhaps you should just dig up the lawn and plant some fruit trees and vegetables!
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