Automatic Lawn Mower Recommendations (or Otherwise !!)

[PeaceForUkraine]

Firstly - are any of them any good ?

Secondly - are any of them worth their hefty price tag ??

Would you recommend a cheap manual alternative that’s easy(ish) but does a much better job ?

Small front garden, medium rear garden, gardener of 15 years has just messaged me to tell me he’s retiring and I know nothing about gardening

Friends have one - they love it. It just wanders about, recharges itself, not sure what make but it was mid price.

i'd love to hear recommendations of specific brands

I have a Flymo 1200R. Not sure they available anymore.
Yes, it's good.

You still need to maintain your lawn. First you need to bury the guidewires, then you'll need to edge your lawn depending on whether you have slabs or borders. It ought to have annual maintenance to change the blades etc and you need somewhere to store it over winter.

We have a manual electric Flymo too. That's generally used for the first and last cuts of the season before the robomow comes out.

I would ask on your local Facebook pages for a recommendation for another gardener.

I bought a worx basic model for £250 on ebay a few years ago.

It works well as long as you are happy that:

It doesn't effectively cut the edges so you will need a strimmer avery week or two.

On the shortest cut setting it can get stuck unless you're garden is perfectly flat. Basically, the shorter setting lowers the blade close to the soil and if there is a slight incline it can get stuck (but doesn't switch off - the wheels keep turning so can make some divots in your lawn.

However, these two items aside I am happy with it. I am happy enough to forego the very shortest setting and strimming the edges is a 10 minute job once a fortnight.

Generally the lawn looks great and it saves me nearly an hour a week from April to October.

The set up can take a few hours also which involves placing the boundary wire.

We looked into them but were concerned about harm to wildlife ie hedgehogs. Apparently some models are more hedgehog friendly than others. Friends have one and it halts for pets etc. But baby hedgehogs are slow and tiny. Worth a google.

also I see you have two seperate gardens. To be honest I am not sure how that works unless you can create a 'corridor' with the wire where the mower can access both front and back.

If that is not possible then you could have two seperate perimeter cables set up but you would have to manually move the mower every time you want it to switch lawns.

I've got some cheap one which under the plastic is the same as the flymo and the husqavarna (all the hacks etc. for them work on mine - eg. expert mode - which is a great way to find breaks - never had luck with the various other suggestions radios/etc)

I really like it - over summer I had guid-wire problems and was manually mowing my back garden, and whilst I liked getting out and about, it was a pain in the arse (especially if I let it lapse and had to wade through longer grass)

Mine does a great job of the front garden, but isn't very good at following the line out as it should to do the back because of a narrow corridor + trampoline legs in the way. Which is a software thing, and I can't get it upgraded, but it's not enough to upset me - it does make it into the back, and I just pick it up and take it there sometimes (it makes its own way home to charge)

If you have lots of lumps and bumps it's going to be a pain - mine likes to throw itself off the side of my garden in winter, and gets stranded on sticks if I don't go and clear them from the garden (large ash trees). You will have little grass fringes everywhere you have an edge.

I would also say that keep it simple when laying the guidewire. Unless you have professionals with a machine, don't bury it, and don't bother carefully laying it round obstacles that can cope with being bumped into. Leave a few spare loops at corners so you have slack if you need to repair/diagnose breaks, and get a big bag of the gel-filled 3M connectors, and a spare reel of wire.

I laid my first guidewire 2 years ago. This summer I laid a new one following weeks of mucking about trying to find a break, plus I'd learned some lessons from the first time.