Yorkshire’s Harewood
House is thriving thanks to the installation of new robotic lawnmowers which
have maintained many of the lawns of the country house throughout summer.
HusqvarnaAutomower are environmentally-friendly robotic mowers which have kept lawns
looking immaculate and have astounded garden staff as well as thousands of
visitors.
Located in Harewood,
just outside Leeds and Harrogate, Harewood House is one of the Treasure Houses
of England. The house was built between 1759 and 1771 by architect John Carr,
with interiors by Robert Adam. The property sits within ‘Capability Brown’ landscape
and spans 100 acres, which is looked after by a charitable education trust and
is a popular tourist attraction throughout the year.
Maintaining
Harewood’s vast and beautiful grounds and gardens requires a great deal of
skill from the whole team and this year head gardener, Trevor Nicholson, made
the decision to introduce the environmentally-friendly Husqvarna Automower to
take care of lawns, freeing up time for staff to focus on tasks which take real
horticultural skill, such as keeping the property’s many dazzling flower
schemes, trees and hedges looking pristine.
After discussions
with Trevor, specialist Husqvarna Automower dealership Balmers GM provided an expert
installation of the robotic lawnmowers at the grounds of Harewood House. The
mowers cover an area of 5000 m2 which includes navigation around trees.
Since their
installation the robots have been a huge success and have provided a number of
benefits, both environmentally and ergonomically, for Harewood House, an
important aspect for the charity. The robotic products have a continuous,
random mowing pattern within a designated area, sending tiny grass clippings
back onto the soil to act as a natural fertiliser. A zero emissions machine,
Husqvarna Automower runs entirely on green energy supplied by Harewood’s own
biomass energy centre.
Head gardener,
Trevor Nicholson, commented: “We’ve been enormously impressed by the robotic
mowers – they’re amazing, and have truly changed the way we work here. Where we
used to rely more on petrol ride-on mowers, we’re now using a green product
which saves the team time. Lawn quality has improved and the fact that the
product is silent has meant no disturbance to our visitors as they enjoy
Harewood’s beautiful tranquil gardens.”
“Something which has
been a real benefit to us is the comparatively light weight of the Husqvarna
Automower. This has helped reduce soil compaction around trees, which used to
suffer due to our use of heavier, ride-on machines in the area. It is all of these
additional benefits to our work in conserving Harewood’s grounds and gardens
that have convinced me that the future of mowing for us is robotic. It has made
Harewood House a more tranquil place to be – and that can only be good for
everyone.”
Niklas Broberg, UK
Automower Specialist commented: “Harewood House is a fantastic example of our
mowers really showing their class; complex areas with a lot of trees. Add to
this steep slopes and we can see that our AWD product has done a fantastic
job.”
