A garden roller is just one of several essential devices to use if you are a conscientious gardener who wants to create and maintain a magnificent looking lawn.
Other important tools for making your lawn the envy of your neighbours include a scarifier, an aerator, an edger, a spreader - and, of course, a trusty lawnmower.
Let's take a look at each of these devices a bit more closely and focus on the tasks they can perform to get your lawn healthy, level and manicured just the way you want it.
Lawn Roller
Let's start with the garden roller - the tool we talk about throughout this site. Lawn rollers fall broadly into two main categories - manual and tow behind. Push-pull manual rollers feature a large drum made of plastic, poly or metal. There are also some older ones to be found which are made of concrete or cast iron.
Plastic polyethylene rollers, and many metal ones, are filled with water or sand to provide essential weight to enable them to flatten a lawn effectively. A cheap manual roller will cost around £30, however a good quality device will cost up to £100. These devices are perfect for small to medium-sized lawns.
Towing lawn rollers, such as those made by Agri-Fab, polyethylene, Handy and T-Mech, can be attached to a ride-on mower or mini tractor, and they certainly take the physical effort out of getting a lawn level. They range in price from around £120 to £300. This type of roller is ideal for large gardens where using a manual device would be too demanding.
Apart from getting a lawn flat and level, garden rollers are also excellent at bedding in turf or garden seeds, as well as many other tasks including flattening mounds and mole hills, and levelling ground when dips and troughs have been filled with fresh soil.
Lawnmower
Once you get your lawn nice and level with a garden roller, you will need to mow your grass regularly to ensure it always looks its best, especially in the spring and summer months.
There are hundreds of models of lawnmowers available buy these days, including cheap push cylinder mowers and electric glide mowers, such as the popular Flymo, which are perfect for small garden lawns. Other lawnmower options include rotary mowers with spinning horizontal blades, hover mowers and the robotic mower, a modern innovation which mows a lawn all by itself. A ride-on mower is another option if you have a large garden and an equally large budget!
Manual mowers which require nothing more than physical effort to operate are still available to buy these days, but the vast majority of mowers are powered by petrol or electric. There are also some are cordless and operate with rechargeable batteries.
Most lawnmowers come with a range of height settings which enable you to cut your grass to a chosen height. The majority also feature a handy attached box to collect grass after it has been cut by the blades. Leading lawnmower brand names include Bosch, Mountfield, Husqvarna, Flymo, McCulloch, Hayter, Qualcast. Einhell, Black & Decker, VonHaus and John Deeres,
Lawn Scarifier
This is a great device for giving you lawn a good old tidy up. These look very similar to mowers and do a super job of ridding your lawn on unsightly dead weeds and moss, thatch and other rotting vegetation.
There are manual, electric and petrol models of scarifier available to buy. Some are combined with an aerator to offer two tools in one unit. A scarifier is sometimes referred to as a dethatcher and operates with a series of prongs on a rotating drum which gather up debris.
A cheap manual push-along scarifier is usually fine for a small garden, but an electric or petrol-powered model is a better choice for a large garden which has an abundance of thatch that needs to be gathered up.
View our range of LAWN SCARIFIERS.
Lawn Aerator
An aerator is an essential device if you want to ensure your lawn is maintained in a healthy condition. They are very efficient at creating holes or slices in your lawn to enable air to circulate more effectively and improve drainage.
Most of us have seen the unusual-looking type of aerator which comes in the form of a pair or shoes or sandals which have a series of metal spikes protruding from the soles - these spikes stab into the lawn as the wearer walks across it, aerating the soil beneath in the process.
Aerators also do a sterling job of breaking up over-compacted soil on a lawn - soil which is too compact makes it difficult for grass roots to penetrate into the ground to get the valuable nutrients they need. A plug, spike or slice method will be used to aerate a lawn, depending on the type of device used.
A cheap pair of aerating shoes may be something of a novelty, although they can achieve the necessary results. But if this type of aerator doesn't appeal to you there are many other options available to buy including push-along manual aerators, petrol or electric aerators and tow-behind aerators which can be attached to a ride-on mower or mini tractor, making them the perfect choice for anyone with a very large lawn.
Leading brands of aerator include Draper, VonHaus, Garland, Greenkey, Handy, Oypla and Einhell. A cheap manual aerator will cost around £20 to £40, but a top quality petrol or electric model will cost considerable more.
View our range of LAWN AERATORS.
Lawn Spreader
This is a very useful device which allows you to spread grass seed or fertiliser evenly over your lawn area. Drop lawn and broadcast spreaders are the most popular push-along types but a cheaper option is a hand-held container spreader which usually has a handle which is turned to release the seed or fertiliser.
If you have a medium to large lawn you will probably be best buying a wheeled spreader by one of the leading brand names including Evergreen, Einhell, Westland, Scotts, Agri-Fab or Turfmaster.
Broadcast push cart spreaders are a popular choice which feature a large seed hopper with wheels and a steering system. A lever on the handlebars of the device is pressed to release seed, weedkiller, sand, lime or fertiliser in a fan-like motion onto the ground.
Drop spreaders operate differently in that they distribute seed and other materials very accurately in a series of even rows. Seed is only scattered in the path that the operator walks, whereas a broadcast spreader throws out seed further afield, covering a larger area with seed in less time.
View our range of LAWN SPREADERS.
Lawn Edger
An edger is the tool you need to get the edges or your lawn looking neat and tidy. They are sometimes referred to as edge trimmers and are available in manual or motorised versions.
Edgers are available to buy with a variety of blade types - star shaped, flat blades with scoop-cut ends and flat rectangular blades. Manual edgers are fine for small gardens but a petrol or electric device a better option if you have a large lawn with a lot edges to keep in good shape.
Edgers are not just good at tidying up a lawn - they can also be used to trim edges along pathed areas, between paving stones, along fences, around trees and beside borders.
A cheap manual edger, with a carbon steel blade, can cost as little £10, whereas an edger with a handy roller cutter tool will cost a bit more at around £20. Petrol and electric edgers are more expensive and average around £50 to £80 Trimmer-edger combo devices are also a popular choice. Popular edger brand names include Black & Decker, Makita, Silverline, Wolf-Garten, McCulloch, Spear & Jackson, Ryobi and Mountfield.
View our range of LAWN EDGERS.
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