Dorset Lawn Mower Dealers

Dorset lawn mower dealers offering a range of lawn mower and garden machinery services including Sales, Service, Repair, Spares and Parts.  Dorset Lawn Mower Dealers can be found in major cities and towns of Dorset as well as across the more rural areas of the county.

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About Lawn Mowers

Cylinder mowers can be electric, petrol powered or simply hand pushed. The blades rotate vertically like a cylinder against a bottom blade and this gives a scissor-like cut and a well manicured lawn. These mowers are perfect for level lawns where a really fine, short cut is required. They come with a variety of cutting widths, rollers for a striped effect and detachable grass collection boxes so you can choose whether or not to collect the clippings.

Rotary – Rotary mowers are extremely versatile and cope with most types of lawn and rougher grassy areas or difficult, sloping banks. Choose from either electric or petrol driven models and either manual push or self-propelled.

If you have a big area to mow or you have difficulty in pushing a lawnmower, then a self-propelled model is definitely worth considering although it might be slightly more expensive. On a rotary mower the blades rotate horizontally at the selected cutting height and the grass is thrown out at the back into a grass collection box. If you don't want to collect the clippings you simply take the box off.

Hover – Hover mowers are rotary mowers that literally hover over the surface of the grass. Generally without wheels, some models do now have rear wheels to make it easier to move them into position prior to use. However, as most models need to be carried, this has led to their lightweight design. The handle folds so the machine can be hung from a shed or garage wall making them extremely space efficient too.

A hover mower is ideal for small to medium gardens, while a bigger model could cope with a medium to large lawn – although the trailing cable will always be a nuisance. Some models come with an integrated grass collection box. If you want to keep your lawn neat and tidy, then a hover mower will do a great job but if you want a high quality cut then it's not the best choice.

About Dorset

Dorset is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town has been Dorchester since at least 1305 situated in the south of the county. Between its extreme points Dorset measures 80 kilometres (50 mi) from east to west and 64 km (40 mi) north to south and has an area of 2,653 square kilometres (1,024 sq mi). Dorset borders Devon to the west, Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east and Hampshire to the east. Approximately half of Dorset's population lives in the South East Dorset conurbation. The rest of the county is largely rural with a low population density.

Dorset is famous for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site which features landforms such as Lulworth Cove, the Isle of Portland, Chesil Beach and Durdle Door, as well as the holiday resorts of Bournemouth, Poole, Weymouth, Swanage and Lyme Regis. Dorset is the principal setting of the novels of Thomas Hardy who was born near Dorchester. The county has a long history of human settlement and some notable archaeology, including the hill forts of Maiden Castle and Hod Hill.

The first known settlement of Dorset was by Mesolithic hunters from around 8000 BC. Their populations were small and concentrated along the coast in the Isle of Purbeck, the Isle of Portland, Weymouth, Chesil Beach and along the Stour valley. These populations used tools and fire to clear these areas of some of the native Oak forest. Dorset's high chalk hills have provided a location for defensive settlements for millennia, there are Neolithic and Bronze Age burial mounds on almost every chalk hill in the county, and a number of Iron Age hill forts, the most famous being Maiden Castle, constructed around 600BC. The chalk downs would have been deforested in the Iron Age making way for agriculture and animal husbandry.

Dorset has Roman artefacts particularly around the Roman town Dorchester where Maiden Castle was captured from the Celtic Durotriges by a Roman Legion in 43 AD under the command of Vespasian, early in the Roman occupation. Roman roads radiated from Dorchester and from the hillfort at Badbury following the tops of the chalk ridges to the many small Roman villages around the county. The Romans also had a presence on the Isle of Portland, constructing – or adapting – hilltop defensive earthworks on Verne Hill. In the Roman era, settlements moved from the hill tops to the valleys, and the hilltops had been abandoned by the fourth century. A large defensive ditch, Bokerley Dyke, delayed the Saxon conquest of Dorset from the north east for up to two hundred years. The Domesday Book documents many Saxon settlements corresponding to modern towns and villages, mostly in the valleys. There have been few changes to the parishes since the Domesday Book. Over the next few centuries the settlers established the pattern of farmland which prevailed into the nineteenth century. Many monasteries were also established which were important landowners and centres of power.

In the 12th-century civil war, Dorset was fortified with the construction of the defensive castles at Corfe Castle, Powerstock, Wareham and Shaftesbury and the strengthening of the monasteries such as at Abbotsbury. In the 17th-century English Civil War, Dorset had a number of royalist strongholds such as Portland Castle, Sherborne Castle and Corfe Castle, the latter two being ruined by Parliamentarian forces during the war. In the intervening years the county was used by the monarchy and nobility for hunting and the county still has a number of Deer Parks. Throughout the late Mediaeval times the remaining hilltop settlements shrank further and disappeared. From the Tudor to Georgian periods farms specialised and the monastic estates were broken up leading to an increase in population and settlement size. During the Industrial Revolution, Dorset remained largely rural and retains its agricultural economy today. The Tolpuddle Martyrs lived in Dorset and the farming economy of Dorset was central in the formation of the trade union movement.

Most of Dorset's landscape falls into two categories, determined by the underlying geology. There are a number of large ridges of limestone downland, much of which have been cleared of the native forest and are mostly grassland and some arable agriculture. These limestone areas include a band of chalk which crosses the county from south-west to north-east incorporating Cranborne Chase, the Dorset Downs and Purbeck Hills. Between the areas of downland are large, wide clay vales (primarily Oxford Clay with some Weald Clay and London Clay) with wide flood plains. These vales are primarily used for dairy agriculture, dotted with small villages, farms and coppices. They include the Blackmore Vale (Stour valley) and Frome valley.

South-east Dorset, around Poole and Bournemouth, lies on very non-resistant Eocene clays (mainly London Clay and Gault Clay), sands and gravels. These thin soils support a heathland habitat which supports all seven native British reptile species. The River Frome estuary runs through this weak rock, and its many tributaries have carved out a wide estuary. At the mouth of the estuary sand spits have been deposited turning the estuary into Poole Harbour, one of several worldwide which claim to be the second largest natural harbour in the world (after Sydney Harbour, though Sydney's claim is disputed). The harbour is very shallow in places and contains a number of islands, notably Brownsea Island, famous for its Red Squirrel sanctuary and as the birthplace of the Scouting movement. The harbour, and the chalk and limestone hills of the Purbecks to the south, lie atop Europe's largest onshore oil field. The field, operated by BP from Wytch Farm has the world's oldest continuously pumping well (Kimmeridge, since the early 1960s) and longest horizontal drill (8 km/5 mi, ending underneath Bournemouth pier). Pottery is produced by Poole Pottery from the local clays.

Most of Dorset's coastline was designated a World Heritage Site in 2001 because of its geological landforms. The coast documents the entire Mesozoic era, from Triassic to Cretaceous and has yielded important fossils including the first complete Ichthyosaur and fossilised Jurassic trees. The coast also features notable coastal landforms, including textbook examples of a cove (Lulworth Cove) and natural arch (Durdle Door). Jutting out into the English Channel is a limestone island, the Isle of Portland, connected to the mainland by Chesil Beach, a tombolo.

In the west of the county the chalk and clay of south-east England begins to give way to the marl and granite of neighbouring Devon. Until recently Pilsdon Pen at 277 metres (909 ft), was thought to be the highest hill in Dorset but recent surveys have shown nearby Lewesdon Hill to be higher, at 279 metres (915 ft).

The principal industry in Dorset was once agriculture. It has not, however, been the largest employer for many decades as mechanisation has substantially reduced the number of workers required. Agriculture has become less profitable and the industry has declined further. Between 1995 and 2003 GVA for primary industry (largely agriculture with some fishing and quarrying) declined from £229 to 188 million—7.1% to 4.0% of the county's GVA. In 2002, 1,903 km2 (735 sq mi) of the county was in agricultural use, down from 1,986 km2 (767 sq mi) in 1989, although the figure has fluctuated somewhat. Cattle is the most common animal stock in the county, their numbers fell from 240,413 to 178,328 in the same period; the dairy herds fell from 102,589 to 73,476. Sheep and pig farming has declined similarly.

Tourism has grown as an industry in Dorset since the early 19th century. 3.4 million British tourists and 360,000 foreign tourists visited the county in 2006 spending a combined total of £659 million. Numbers of both domestic and foreign tourists has fluctuated in recent years due to various factors including security and economic downturn, a trend reflected throughout the UK.

Dorset will host the sailing event at the 2012 Summer Olympics at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy in Portland Harbour. Along with Weymouth Bay these waters have been credited by many, including the Royal Yachting Association, as being amongst the best in Northern Europe for sailing. Due to the venue being completed and available before the Olympics (on May 19, 2009), it will be used by international sailing teams in preparation for the event in 2012.

Dorset is largely rural with many small villages, few large towns, no cities and no motorways. The largest conurbation is the South East Dorset conurbation which consists of the seaside resort of Bournemouth, the historic port of Poole and the town of Christchurch plus many villages. Bournemouth was created in the Victorian era when sea bathing became popular. As an example of how affluent the area has become, Sandbanks in Poole was worthless land unwanted by farmers in the nineteenth century, but is said to be amongst the highest land values by area in the world. Originally part of Hampshire, Bournemouth and Christchurch were added to boundaries of Dorset following the reorganisation of local government in 1974.

The other two major settlements in the county are Dorchester, (the county town) and Weymouth, one of the first tourist towns, frequented by George III and still very popular today. Blandford Forum, Sherborne, Gillingham, Shaftesbury and Sturminster Newton are historical market towns which serve the farms and villages of the Blackmore Vale (Hardy's Vale of the Little Dairies). Blandford is home to the Badger brewery of Hall and Woodhouse. Bridport, Lyme Regis, Wareham and Wimborne Minster are also market towns. Lyme Regis and Swanage are small coastal towns popular with tourists.

Still in construction on the western edge of Dorchester is the experimental new town of Poundbury (expected to be fully completed by 2025), commissioned and co-designed by Prince Charles. The suburb is designed to integrate residential and retail buildings and counter the growth of dormitory towns and car-oriented development.