Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Nah twisting didn't work.

If I had had pliers with a large enough aperture, that would have been the winner.

Anyway, I just ran threw lengths. It took next to no time. Ha.

Any recommendations for powered gardening equipment? We're moving from rented accommodation, so a lot of the gardening kit we've used previously was the landlord's.

I've decided I'd really like a cordless, battery powered mower (make it easier to mow the lawn without the faff of cables and an extension, avoid the dirty nature of a petrol mower). Looking at recommendations from "Which?", there's a Spear & Jackson one that scores highly at around the £360 mark. But then I started looking at their strimmers and other things like hedge trimmers, and it looks like each one has their own unique batteries that comes with the unit.

This feels annoying to me. From a simplicity perspective I'd like as few batteries and chargers as possible.

So then I started looking at things like Ryobi's One+ range, which seems to fit the bill in terms of being able to have a single set of batteries power everything, but seems like it'll be a decent bit more expensive for a comparative product, somehow.

I'd really love to hear some real life experiences from those with recent experience on this.

Our first electric flymo lawnmower was £20 from ebay and lasted 7yrs.

Bought a more recent version of it (flymo speedi-mo 360) for £40 from FBM. Excellent condition It's great.

Imo the hassle of cables is much exaggerated if you've got <100ft of lawn. Much better to pick up something local 2nd hand to reduce waste and unnecessary battery production.

Probably not the answer you wanted, but that's my 2p.

The Ryobi One+ range is hard to beat in breadth of tool available, but it is only a brand of Techtronic.
Ryobi is currently slightly off the pace as other brands are offering brushless versions which will last longer, and do more for a given battery size.
There is also the dilemma as newer, larger battery cells get used in power tool batteries.
Ryobi now have a range of HP tools, (brushless) + batteries, (maybe based upon 2170 rather than 18650 cells), but it will be a while until the entire range of tools is upgraded.

Have a flick through the Toolstation catalogue, the Techtronic brand Erbauer offers some of the range of Ryobi but cheaper.

I own the Ryobi (brushed) extending hedge trimmer, (brushed) lawnmower and (newer, brushless) strimmer, a (brushed) reciprocating saw, and a (brushed) small circular saw and a basic 40Nm 2-speed drill. All have paid for themselves. Currently a mixture of 2Ah & 5Ah (old 18650) batteries.

I had a few bits of the Bosch DIY range before and they were fine. The strimmer felt very light but had decent power even compared to my newer Makita that runs off twin batteries and weighs about 3 times as much. Can't speak for their mowers but if you've just got a nice, even grass lawn then almost anything will do. Our lawn is bumpy as heck, always full of mole hills and partly sloped. I have a Greenworks 40V mower which just about manages the flat part, but can't push it up the slope and I need to swap batteries half way through. Cables would be a nightmare for me as I have trees in the middle of the grass. Looking to upgrade to a Makita DLM532 but it is priiicey, so need to wait for the other one to die really.

Ryobi stuff comes on sale or deals with a battery/charger pretty often.

I've got a few bits of Ryobi stuff and I think I've got them all at a significant drop from RRP

@hugo7 no, I absolutely do appreciate all input. I'm in the fortunate position of having more than 100ft of lawn by a decent amount. Keen to point out I'm nowhere near London to avoid being put in the golf club thread. Current lawnmower is corded electric on a similar size lawn to where we're moving to, and I do find it a massive pain in the arse.

@mespilus any tips for how to figure out whether a given item uses the old 18650 cells versus the newer 2170 ones?

@aggi good shout - I will keep my eyes peeled especially with things like black friday deals not too far in the future.

The Spear & Jackson model I had been looking at was https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8797212?cjdata=MXxOfFl8WXww&istCompanyId=a74d8886-5df9-4baa-b776-166b3bf9111c&istFeedId=36e094b5-4873-4656-8e75-75db46377ddc&istItemId=ixwlpxlwt&istBid=t&$ja=tsid%3A11674%7Cprd%3A100314255&utm_source=Which%3F&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_campaign=IntelligentReach+Argos+Feed&utm_content=13874228&utm_custom1=100314255&utm_custom2=Other&cmpid=cojun&cjevent=2e2eda57637311ee82a079150a18b8fc&dclid=CMLhyJXo3oEDFcSGUAYdbusM8A

Based on feedback here and my own limited knowledge of batteries, I'll keep looking. Sounds like I should prioritize 1) brushless motor, 2) combination of battery voltage and capacity, 3) time to charge batteries, 4) ability to be used with other power tools in the range. Keen to hear if there's other things to consider that I'll be able to see on a product spec sheet (rather than subjective factors like build quality or ability to deal with uneven ground that I'll need to look through reviews to check for).

I've got the Spear and Jackson above, was really happy with it at first and worked really well.

Unfortunately seems to be made of cheese and not proper plastic, the collecting basket broke and now the height adjuster for the wheels has failed at the rear wheel.

Eeep, thanks for the heads up. I will avoid, in that case.

Is Titan from Screwfix just going to be terrible? After another look around, this seems like good value, and then I'd be able to use the same battery in various drills, strimmers, hedge trimmers, etc.

Or am I going down a ridiculous rabbit hole and it's better to just buy a good mower by itself and then a good hedge trimmer by itself, regardless of whether the batteries are interchangeable?

Ryobi now have some items, tools & batteries, with an additional 'HP' name/label.
The HP batteries are also physically larger, to fit the larger individual battery cells.

Ryobi pride themselves that they have used the same 'into the handle' connector since their corporate colour was blue and batteries were NiCad.

The HP tools and HP batteries do have a line of 4 additional contact points, but tools + batteries are interchangeable.

Forgot earlier, I also have a blue Ryobi hedge trimmer and angle grinder that work fine on modern Li-ion (non-HP) batteries.

https://uk.ryobitools.eu/technologies/one-hp/

Titan is pretty much a Screwfix own brand, not the highest quality but tends to come with a 3 year guarantee (check!) they will replace without question.

I use a DeWalt hedge cutter and strimmer, largely because all my tools are by them and I have umpteen batteries, quality is excellent. I have a small petrol mower by Mountfield, from Screwfix, which has lasted 5 years so far without problems and only cost about £150.

I might sound like your father here, but are you seriously considering £360+ on a flipping grass mower? Spend that money on your mortgage, kids tuition fees etc.

Get a good quality push mower, it's honestly the nicest hipster thing. Good lawn cuts and no electricity, cable or charging to worry about. Don't go down the proprietary 100's of batteries, 100's of chargers route. Terrible for the environment and a pig to use. Some things need to be powered, but not everything.

Webb push mowers are made in the UK and if they break, you can actually fix them rather than making more landfill e-waste when the motor or battery inevitably fail.

https://www.screwfix.com/c/outdoor-gardening/lawn-mowers/cat840622?brand=webb&mowerpropulsiontype=push

With a lawn that big what about a robot? Surely once your into new battery mower territory the price increase is minor.

Mowing can be enjoyable, but overall regularly mowing a massive lawn is a bit shit so if you can sack it off I would.

Just don’t mow the lawn, easiest and best approach all round.

@Jameo it's definitely a lot more than I expected a well reviewed battery mower to be. I'd much rather spend a lot less, but I also don't want to buy a crappy cheap version that is terrible and then I end up buying twice. Honestly, I hadn't even considered a manual one. I've never used one and don't know anyone who has one. I've done a bit of reading and it sounds like they're best used with very flat lawns where the grass is kept very short. Does that sound about right in your experience?

@hugo7 I had assumed robot mowers were all still around a grand for a decent one, but I see you can get a fairly decent one or £330 these days so I will investigate.

I'm still very torn. I suspect I may end up getting a corded one for about 100 quid and then hopefully the battery technology will be better and cheaper in about 5 years when that breaks.

I picked up the Bosch hand mower recently, we have a very bumpy shit lawn at the moment but when I get round to sorting the garden it will mainly be planted up so I won’t have much mowing to do.

The mower is fine. It doesn’t collect the trimmings well, but I rake it up after. For £40 I’m perfectly happy

I got a push mower, Bosch, if the grass is longer than a few centimetres it won't cut it. It's quite a useless thing. I have to borrow my neighbours petrol mover to cut it back down if it's got at all long.

I spent half my childhood push mowing my parents lawn as my share of the chores.

I cannot state how much two extension cables and an electric mower was an improvement.

Nah, a manual mower is definitely not the thing for me, in that case.

I took a bit deeper dive into the Einhell Freelexo 400 BT robot this morning, and it sounds like it isn't waterproof, is a pain to set up, and isn't particularly smart, so I don't think that's the right thing for me either. I've got a robot vacuum cleaner and it's great, but I also wouldn't feel able to get rid of my standard vacuum for bits the robot can't do, so I worry that a robot lawnmower would be similar.

After all this, I think I may well just end up going for a refurb Titan corded electric model from Screwfix for £80, wait a few years until it breaks, and then hope that robot lawnmowers have advanced enough in that time that I feel like buying one.

That seems mad, they only do one so we must have the same one, and I chopped back grass about 30cm tall. It wasn’t always good at it, as it just pushes over and stuff, but we got there in the end

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Wow, yeah that would be impossible! I'd be going back and forth trying to get enough speed on the blade to cut and it would just jam or not cut.

How long did it take and how much grass?

Maybe my issue is I have 50m2 give or take. Edit: I see your not exactly cutting a tiny square either. Maybe you've more power/determination!

There was a bit of jamming, and I keep chucking the hopper thing off, and the grass barely makes it in there anyway. The ground is lumpy as fuck, but I do only have like 5m2 or something. Probably took a concerted hour to sort out the first time, plus strimming the edges. As I mentioned up thread we’re going to lose most of the grass in the end so manual seemed fine. Plus whoever called it the fixed gear of mowing fully influenced me and I had no choice

I have 50m2

Shouldn't you have goats or something like that

Do you have any power tools, and if so which brand?

Makita do a lawn mower. I saw a few 2nd hand vgc ones without batteries come up when I was looking for ours.

I'm sure Ryobi are decent and all, but if you don't have any power tools I'd be more pursaded to go with Makita given how widely they are used. Plus bare tools often seem to be on sale at more competitive prices than say DeWalt or Milwaukee.

To counter @midlife , I have the Spear & Jackson and it's been fine. Although it might be a slightly older model and came with two 36v batteries. My garden is about 100ft long and about 20ft wide and I'll get at least a couple of cuts out of a battery.