Grapevine Blog
The mowdown on grass cutting
A brief history of the lawn mowers of yesterday, today and tomorrow Once only the provenance of the wealthy, the garden lawn emerged as a seventeenth century status symbol amongst wealthy landowners using local workers to keep the grass around their country houses cropped with scythes, the original tool for lawn cutting that we’ve proudly adopted as part of our Green Reaper logo. While a long way from the immaculate stripes of today’s well-tended suburban garden, it was the start of a trend that has become part of British vernacular, with mowing a weekly ritual of simple pleasure that is a welcome contrast to our sedentary, desk-bound lives. And while making this connection to a more pastoral existence seems timeless, the machines that we now use to mow our lawns have certainly developed over nearly two hundred years. Here we trace the fascinating history of the lawn mower, looking at not only how different types of mower came about but what the future holds with even more environmentally-friendly ways to keep your grass greener over the next decade.
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