Flymo all the way, as far as I'm concerned - they're good on spares and there's always repair places you can take them to. Just decide whether you want one with a grass box or not, make sure it has a metal blade, that you get the spanner with it, and 3 spacers. It sounds to me as if your old mower was set too high - flymos are supplied with three spacers - with all 3 beneath the blade, it does a short, close cut, with 2 a bit higher, and one, obviously, a much higher cut. The mower should be scraped clean underneath after every use.

The flymo 330 doesn't have a grass collection system, I notice -that usually means they're lighter to use though, and it'd be my choice. Otherwise, there's the Flymo easiglide 300 with a grass collection system - I've been using this one in someone's garden, its fine, but a bit more unwieldy because of the grass box.

I've had the same Flymo since 1991 (similar to the 330) - its been repaired once in all that time, when the handle broke off and the cut out packed up. I like it because its light and easy to get in and out of the car when I used to cut other people's grass.

Wish they would try to market them again in the USA.

They didn't take off then, Loosestrife? I notice most folks in the USA use petrol mowers, but that might be because your gardens are so much larger than ours.

I was always told that if you wanted a lawn you had to have a cylinder mower; rotary mowers are for people who have grass.
Having neither I wouldn't like to comment on the validity of that but I know that they don't use rotary mowers for cricket pitches and I suspect that they don't use them at Wimbledon either.

Well you're absolutely right in what you say, Urbanite. But you can't beat a hover mower when you've left cutting the grass for too long, especially if its wet, and let's face it, most of us don't have bowling greens for lawns, probably aiming more for a decent looking area of grass - for one thing, sports turf and particularly bowling greens are grown using very specific grasses which are not the same mix of grasses in your average roll of turf. Even the mix on the table (or wicket, if you like) on a cricket ground is not the same as the outfield. And its a fact most of us do not have a groundsman on hand to spend all those hours on the grass...

But if you want a striped effect, you need a cylinder mower with a roller on the back - which won't cut those annoying single, tall, flowering stalks of grass which often appear, nor will they cut a wet, slightly too long lawn.

Of course, some people have an obsession about lawns, well, I say some people, it's always a man in my experience, never a woman. I used to live next door to someone who had luxury turf laid, cut it frequently with a cylinder mower AND nail scissors at times, and it looked fabulous - but no one in his family was allowed to use the lawn in any way at all. You pay your money and you take your choice...

The Flymo people said that the reasons for deciding not to continue to market in the USA were not being able to get enough sales and product support people on board and ( oddly enough) the flymo does not work well evenly cutting the grass Americans prefer to grow in the USA as opposed to the grass grown in the UK.

Oh yes, of course, all that zoysia, buffalo, St. Augustine etc. One thing I'd like to know though - when Americans talk about 'sod', which we call turf, is the grass in 'sod' similar in content to ours here, or can it still be zoysia or whatever, in other words, does 'sod' mean a certain type of grass, or only that its supplied in sods?

Whatever type of grass eg. Kentucky bluegrass, st augustine or as mentioned zoysia, supplied in sods...grass, roots and soil.

Ah, thanks Loosestrife - so it could be any type of grass, useful to know.