Heaven is a leaf sweeper

Autumn, I love autumn but sorry, not so keen on the leaves. No sir. However this year, having waited in the hope the price would come down (it didn’t), I invested in a leaf sweeper (which one of my clients described it to their other half as looking like a pram). Ignore that – if you have lots of leaves then a leaf sweeper may well be the answer to your prayers because it was to mine.

I spend much of my November just gathering leaves into piles before scooping them up and sending them on their way. This is all well and good but later autumn and early winter is the time of year when I really want to be investing my time in the coming year, not sweeping up leaves.

Here was the vista that awaited me at one of my lovely clients (whilst they were away):

So we could…

Deploy the mower to hoofer up the leaves (and give the lawn a bit of a trim we are are at it – bonus). The only trouble with that is you have to wait for a dry day (not a luxury for a jobbing gardener) because flipping the mower over every few minutes to unclog isn’t the dream.
Invest in a leaf blower to blast those scurvy leaves into a corner where they can await their fate – ah well I have one of those and we come back to the problem above, wet leaves which are the norm at this time of year. Also it can be a bit windy so you end up blowing leaves back to where they were a few moments ago – a groundhog day of leaves.
“Invest” in a leaf vacuum – now we are talking… a device that sucks up those pesky leaves and also chops them up before depositing them in convenient bag. Hmmm… perhaps not… I suspect wet leaves will easily gum up this fine machine and for most of us lowly non-estate gardeners it means something involving power using a cable – a what?!

No, we needed a different approach and if it looks like a pram I don’t care.

Ok, I agree – it really does look like a pram (but probably much cheaper) however once you take it for a spin you will find yourself in leaf sweeping heaven. There is nothing, and I mean nothing more satisfying that hurling the leaf sweeper at a carpet of leaves and looking back to see that lovely bare area behind you.

OK, I appreciate there are a few leaves left behind – it isn’t perfect but I have halved the time it takes me to deal with leaves and that means I can get on with other things. Below is what the same area looked like about 10 minutes later.