Which Lawn Mower Gives You The Best Cut to Get the Best Stripes- Cylinder or Rotary?

The lawn is the canvas on which your garden is painted. There is nothing better than relaxing in your garden in the summer sun enjoying the fruits of your hard work. Stripes are not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, they can be beneficial when fertilising or spraying your lawn as you can use the stripes as guidance.

To get you started, we thought we would take you through step by step on how to achieve those perfect lawn stripes, using our stunning Allett cylinder mowers . We have been making cylinder mowers since 1965 and believe that our machines are expertly-built, reliable, well-proven grass-cutting machines producing a seemingly effortless first-class finish to every lawn on which they are used. There are several factors involved in creating a striped lawn; the type mower used, the grass type of your lawn, the health of your grass, and so on!

The first thing we need to consider is choosing whether to use a cylinder mower or a rotary mower.

We highly recommend a cylinder mower because you can achieve a much more uniform, crisp line, with no gradient change in each lawn stripe. The main benefit of using a cylinder mower lies in the close cut it can achieve and the cleanness of the cut. The world's  most famous lawns and sporting stadiums use cylinder mowers because of their quality of cut and world class presentation. The ragged action of a rotary blade leaves your grass blade with jagged edges which just doesn't look as neat and will reflect light at different angles affecting the stripe. As the blade rotates on a horizontal plane on a rotary mower, the grass on each side of the blade is being pushed in different directions. This can mean that you may have a shade variation in your lawn stripes (usually in the centre of each stripe) which can mean the lawn stripes aren't as pristine as you would like. A jagged cut can leave your grass susceptible to disease.

Because a cylinder mower cuts the grass very short, the lawn must be absolutely level or the mower will scalp it meaning the blade cuts into the roots or even the soil. These scalped areas will become bare and unsightly - which is not what you want! A rotary may be best for a bumpy/uneven rough lawn. We would advise you to cut at a higher height of cut, since this means that there is a larger surface area of grass blade to reflect the light off, giving you a better contrast between lawn stripes. The basic rule says only remove one-third of the leaf-blade when mowing, to ensure that enough length is left to feed the replacement leaves that will be produced. You need to keep on top of your mowing when using a cylinder mower - during the summer this could mean mowing twice a week or even more. If you haven't got the time to be mowing regularly in the summer, or if you go away for a week we suggest the optional front wheel kit to higher your mower- this will allow you to cut longer grass with your cylinder mower.