A Wheeled Rotary petrol lawnmower could be the ideal choice if you have a multipurpose lawn, used by all the family, which sees a lot of use and which may be uneven in places. Because of the blade action on a rotary mower, the finish is not as crisp and neat as with a Rotary Lawnmower, however, if a striped finish is important to you, you can buy a model with a roller.
A Rotary Petrol Lawnmower
You cannot cut as close with a rotary lawnmower as with a cylinder one. The minimum cutting length on a rotary model is around 25mm (about 1”). However as lawns where children play should be left longer to avoid ‘bald patches’ developing, this is not usually a problem and it also irons out the visibility of minor imperfections in unevenness of surface – it also stops the blades from risk of grounding on a higher spot. The maximum height you can leave your grass after cutting is around 100mm (about 4”) and this is probably most suitable to wilder areas of the garden.
The very cheapest Rotary Mowers do not have a height of cut adjustment and these are probably best avoided as you will want to leave your grass longer at certain times of the year.
Another point to bear in mind with regard to the height of cut you want to achieve is that if you want your lawn to be low maintenance, you would need to cut your lawn about three times a week with a cylinder lawnmower set on the lowest setting in order to maintain the result. You could generally get away with once a week or less with a rotary lawnmower, even allowing for the fact that you should not, as a general rule, cut more than one third off the length of your grass in one go.
A Wheeled Rotary Mower is the best choice for a family garden.
Can be push-along or self propelled
Variable height of cutter blades
Key start option on some machines
Roller option if required
A Hover Petrol Lawnmower
The Hover version of a Rotary Lawnmower also uses rotating blades. As the hover mower has no wheels, it relies on the ‘hovercraft principle’ whereby a cushion of air is generated by the spinning blades which lifts the mower off the ground and enables it to be easily manoeuvred in difficult areas such as shaped border edges, small lawns and around trees.
Hover Lawnmowers also have variable cutting heights and can cut slightly lower than a wheeled Rotary Lawnmower, down to about 10mm or ½” and the highest cut is about 40mm or 2” as with the wheeled version. Flymo have come up with a neat transport wheels set for their petrol hover mower – please see the advertisement below for this item available from Amazon UK.
There is a very wide choice of Rotary Petrol Lawnmowers, this type makes up the bulk of the models available. The main UK names are Hayter, McCulloch, Atco, Mountfield and Flymo.