My wife loves getting out behind our reel mower | Photo by Jonathan Blundell
As Spring arrives, the heavy lawn mowers start coming out of the garages.
This season consider replacing your gas powered lawn mower with a reel (manual powered) one.
Reel mowers reduce your fossil fuel consumption, reduce noise pollution and can be great exercise.
In addition, because a reel mower cuts your grass more like a pair of scissors, instead of ripping and tearing it like traditional gas powered mowers, reel lawn mowers are better for your lawn as well. As one local nursery owner told me – it's the same method golf courses use to cut their greens.
We’ve used a push mower for decades. It was perfect for our small lawn. Then we realized we didn’t really need/use our lawn and it was a waste of water…so we ripped it out last year and put in drought-tolerant plants (lavender and salvia) and herbs and love it. Wish we’d done it sooner!