Why remove leaves from the lawn?
Although heaps of crispy leaves are lovely to scuffle through when out for a walk, they are less welcome on the lawn.
Why? Because the grass suffers and may even die if the layers of leaves are not removed. A dense smothering blanket of leaves blocks the light and air, especially once the leaves become sodden with rain.
What to do with the leaves?
Fortunately, the chore of leaf sweeping is well worth the effort for the resultant leaf mould.
Just bag up the leaves, or pile them up within a wire netting enclosure (jump up and down on them to make more space), and two years later you'll have dark crumbly leaf mould for mulching around plants and improving the soil -- all for free.
What are the best tools for clearing up leaves?
A rotary mower
If your mower is a rotary with a grassbag, then you can easily use this to vacuum up leaves. They'll be chopped up by the blades too, to aid composting. However, if the ground is soft, you can end up making quite a mess.
Hand tools
If you only have a small garden, then a sweeping brush for the hard surfaces and a rake for the lawn should be sufficient.
Choose your rake carefully. The ideal leaf rake shouldn't dig into the lawn like a scarifying rake, but instead glide over the surface, containing the leaves within its curved shape so that you can gradually accumulate a heap. Most hand tool companies include these in their range -- choose tough wire or rubbery tines for longevity and expect to pay from around £15.
Then comes the problem of transferring the leaves to barrow or bag. The traditional two boards are fine for moving wodges of leaves, but if you don't like bending, a long-handled leaf grab (with plastic or metal blades from around £13-20) may suit you better.
Mechanical sweepers
A mechanical lawn sweeper collects leaves and other debris, so is a good choice for large lawns. As you push the sweeper along, its wide brush whirls the leaves off the lawn and into the collector. The working height is adjustable for use on paving or lawns, but don't be tempted to use one on gravel, because the brush picks this up and throws it facewards. For this reason, goggles are a sensible precaution if there's any chance of grit, stones or other small projectiles (eg acorns) lying on the lawn.
Sweepers are usually around 60cm or more wide (from around £100), but not widely stocked due to limited demand. There are also towable versions to go behind your garden tractor or ride-on. Look for both types on one of the online garden equipment sites.
A garden vacuum or blower
A much noisier but easier method of clearing lawns is to use a powered blower, garden vac, or both.
Battery, mains or petrol-engined hand-held blowers (to take the weight, most have a shoulder strap; some have wheels on the nozzle) and 4-wheeled blowers (from around £80) are useful for clearing large lawns and paving in broad sweeps, driving the leaves into a heap which is simple but time-consuming to move with a leaf grab.
It's speedier to suck up the leaf pile with a garden vacuum. The vacuuming process shreds the leaves a little, so they take up less space and rot down faster than whole leaves. Some blowers convert to vacuums, saving you the expense of buying two machines, but find out how easy it is to convert from one mode to another. Some have to have to be partly dismantled and reassembled, but Flymo's Gardenvac, for example, is simple to switch modes with a lever. Hand-held petrol-engined blower/vacs cost from around £90 and are made by a number of companies, which you'll see if you go to one of the online garden equipment web sites.
If contemplating clearing very large areas of lawn and other flat surfaces, then a wheeled leaf and litter vac is much easier to use. You might track down a mains electric version, but petrol-engined machines are more common and widely available from groundsman's suppliers and online (costing from around £450). Most have an optional extra wander hose (from around £100) for beds and borders inaccessible to the machine.
Useful links for sweepers and blowers
Copyright (c) Val & Alec Scaresbrook
