by Joy Cooke

Created on: October 10, 2010

When I moved into my new property almost two years ago I adored the large sprawling garden. I am very lucky to have moved here and it really is the garden of my dreams with ample room for me to grow lots of vegetables, a fairly large flower garden and there's even a small woodland at the bottom edge of my garden which I am very proud of.

I moved in at the beginning of summer and had an idyllic few months just pottering around the garden, enjoying the shade of the trees and planning all the alterations I was going to undertake. It was blissful. Well, until we had an end of summer storm that is. When I awoke the next morning I looked out at my beautiful garden and saw a sea of leaves, wondering how on earth any of those blasted trees (remember, 24 hours previously I had adored every tree in the garden!) still had any green on their branches!

The Wilkinson Sword Stainless Steel Leaf Rake (601320W) is honestly the best leaf rake I've ever used. It makes light work of clearing up the leaves in the garden quite simply because it's such a comfortable rake to hold and the fact that the plastic head is a little wider than usual, allowing the user to cover more of the lawn with each sweep.

The handle is longer than those on other leaf rakes and this prevents the need for ducking and stooping, also you will find you can more easily get between the trees and underneath shrubs to ensure your garden remains as tidy and leaf free as possible. The entire handle is rubber coated and this means no blisters or chafing on your palms while raking, this did happen once when I used a particularly cheap leaf rake as the handle was so rough that it actually took a little skin from my hands!

The soft grip covering also means the leaf rake isn't likely to slip from your hands if you're particularly vigorous when it comes to ridding the lawn of excess leaves!

The head of the leaf rake is plastic and tough enough to sweep up plenty of leaves, cut weeds and mown grass without so much as the thin arms bending - much less falling out all over the place as happened when I used the cheap rake I mentioned earlier! It doesn't damage the lawn however; I had initially been a little concerned about this as there seemed to be so little give in the arms, but even when having to sweep harder than usual there are never any blemishes in my lawn at all and the rake also doesn't drag up the grass by it's roots which is always another thing to worry about when purchasing new garden rakes.

As with all lawn rakes the size does take a little getting used to, but you will quickly got into a rhythm with your sweeping and eventually you will find you can clear your garden in half the time it took when your rake was brand new.  The rake is very well balanced and despite the low centre of gravity it's very easy to manoeuvre around and as I have already said is extremely comfortable to hold.  You will also find that the rake makes it easy to move all the leaves around into manageable piles ready to be either bagged up or added to the compost bin, it will comfortably collect large bundles of leaves and also the odd stray leaf or two which may have been missed.

Other considerations are the fact that this is stainless steel so isn't likely to rust (very important because of the outdoors nature of this tool) and also the useful hanging hook which avoids having to simply lean it against the wall as these things always fall over at the merest breath of wind. I hang mine in the shed and because it's such a flat item it takes up barely any room and is easily at hand whenever I need to clear up the never ending fall of leaves.

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