Sunday, December 27, 2009

Mowing your lawn

Most landed properties, terrace/linked house, semi-D or bungalow would have a small plot of land with cow grass or special turf.. This area requires regular mowing every month. Otherwise, the place would look unkempt and wild.


You can pay freelance gardeners who go around the housing area with a grass cutter for their services. The gardener’s charges for a terrace house is about RM50.00. For a semi –D, you will have to pay about RM100.00 and a bungalow owner has to fork out something like RM150 to RM300.00, depending on the size of the garden.

However, if you are one of those DIY buff, you can save the monthly charges by investing in a small electric mower and trimmer. The cost of the mower is about RM450.00 while the trimmer costs about RM130.00 (Borsch).

I use a Borsch mower and a Black & Decker trimmer. Why do I need both a mower and a trimmer?  The answer is obvious.

 The mower cannot reach all corners and edges. The trimmer complements the mower to finish the job!

You can maintain the lawn yourself and recover the cost of investment in the equipment within one year. With the electric mower, you can cover 2,000 sq feet within one hour. So, if you have a terrace house with 300 sq feet of lawn, you can complete the task within 10 minutes!




You can save lots of money DIY lawn mowing and doing it at your own convenience. On top of this, paying a free lance gardener can be risky and troublesome. Why is it risky? The gardener can spy on your house while mowing the garden. Your maid can become the target for the gardener and your home can be burgled without any obvious break-in. How?  In many instances, your maid collaborates with the freelance gardener.

Engaging a freelance gardener can be troublesome too. Unless you employ the same gardener every month and he has good memory of your requirements and expectations, you have to personally supervise him. He has to know how short you want the grass trimmed and where to dispose of the cuttings. You could have completed the task yourself, for the same amount of time spent giving instructions and supervising him..

Invest in the right tools and you can save money and soon enjoy the immense satisfaction of doing it yourself. On top of that, you get plenty of exercise, sweating out.