TECHNOLOGY
my pick
From robot mowers to electric pruning shears, spruce up your outside space with these leading garden gadgets
Ever since the first lawnmower was invented in 1830 by Edwin Budding of Stroud to replace the traditional scythe, we have been in love with gardening tools. Next to the kitchen, there is no part of the home more amenable to labour-saving gadgetry than the garden.
And lawnmowers have come some way since Budding’s ‘grass shearing machine’, with substantial numbers of people now using a robot mower. These can cost £1,500-plus, but there’s a new breed of sub-£1,000 mowing robots, some of which don’t require a wire boundary to be buried round the perimeter of the lawn.
1. One such wire-free machine is the new Navimow iSeries from China (£999, navimow. segway.com), where, ironically, almost nobody has a lawn. It’s an excellent machine, nonetheless, and exceptionally quiet. Instead of guide wires to stop it rampaging off-piste through your rosebeds, it has a camera, GPS and AI-assisted mapping.
It’s important to note that a robot mower doesn’t just mow the lawn and it’s done until next week. Rather, it’s a continuous process you might programme to happen each day while you’re out, and thus more akin to having a couple of donkeys nibbling away at your lawn. Except robots aren’t great on bumpy lawns. And be aware, if you go robotic, you’ll need a smartphone, as well as a penchant for gadgets.
