While everyone else's lawns wither and yellow in the relentless summer sun, the grass at RHS Garden Wisley in Surrey, England, remains admirably immaculate—lush, green and, to our slight irritation, the garden even has the outlines of some stylish roses mown into the turf.
Turf art, as the gardeners at Wisley call it, has been decorating the lawns there for the past six years and it still remains one of the only locations to practice such a skill. "The garden team started off by doing patterns in the lawns with our Honda rotary mowers instead of traditional straight lines," explains Welsey Olliffe, garden manager. "This led on to us being loaned a small cylinder hand mower to try, which enabled us to do patterns and even writing within the lawn.”
Before you open a new tab on your computer and begin frantically searching for small cylinder hand mower on eBay, it's probably worth knowing that these mowers are not readily available—the gardeners at Wisley rely on their good relationship with the Budding Foundation Museum of Gardening, based in West Sussex, England. This tiny (one man, in fact) organization run by Clive Gravett loans Wisley a few of his antique Ransome mowers.
"Garden designers and turf managers are always looking to add something new and exciting to their projects," says Gravett, whose charity is now in its fifth year, having raised over £60,000 towards helping young people in need throughout England and Wales.
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