LAWNMOWER BUZZES
Many years ago, I used to work in a factory
and one of the jobs was mowing the lawn outside.
Love it!
Are you all right there? It's very noisy.
What do you reckon?
Well, you would expect the lawn to be lovely,
considering they make lawnmowers inside this factory.
If only we had a drone to look at all my lovely handiwork.
Oh, yes, that's the ticket.
Anyhow...
..today we're at one of the UK's biggest lawnmower factories.
Oh, beautiful!
And I'm Mower Man...
Well, sort of.
I look like a cross between Buzz Aldrin and a Teletubby.
..on a mission to learn how high-tech machinery...
It's like a knife through butter, that. It is.
..makes mighty mowers that deliver stripes to be proud of.
Gorgeous.
It's a factory dedicated to engineering precision.
Would you say this is like the Bentley of the factory?
Rolls-Royce, mate. Rolls-Royce?!
And while I find out how to get the perfect lawn,
Cherry's been let loose on the most hallowed turf of all.
That's right, I'm at Wembley...
Wow.
..getting it pitch perfect for the biggest game of the season.
I feel like I've died and I've gone to grass heaven.
And historian Ruth Goodman...
Oh!
..is uplifted by hovercraft technology.
Ooh! I think we have lift-off!
They've been making lawnmowers at this factory since the 1940s.
So they certainly can CUT it when it comes to mower construction.
Apologies for that. Welcome to Inside The Factory.
# You've done it all
# You've broken every code... #
Chaps.
# And pulled the rebel to the floor... #
Anything good on?
INDISTINCT REPLY
Right, OK, I'll move on.
HE LAUGHS
You're supposed to say, "Inside The Factory."
# Come up and see me Make me smile... #
Never mind, I can clearly see they're a happy bunch here.
# Running wild... #
Very important.
This is the Toro factory in Hertfordshire,
where they make over 15,000 lawnmowers every year.
They make all sorts of mowers here...
Oh, look at these.
..from big 'uns for the largest of country manors...
That's proper, that.
..to high-tech machines for Wimbledon tennis
and Premier League football clubs.
# Running wild... #
But today I'm following production of this little beauty.
The Hayter Harrier 56 petrol-powered lawnmower.
What a gorgeous bit of kit this is.
Producing something like this is no mean feat.
It's a complex, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle
made up of 87 individual parts.
At its heart is an engine
which powers a rotary cutting blade underneath,
as well as a roller at the back
which propels the machine forwards
whilst giving your lawn that classic striped finish.
Production begins with the main body of the mower, called the deck.
And how's that for TV timing?
As design engineer Richard Carter
just happens to be receiving a delivery of them.
Ey-up, Richard. You all right, pal? How are you? Good to see you, buddy.
Now, I've gotta be honest with you.
I've had every lawnmower under the sun over the years.
I've had petrol ones, electric ones, ride-on ones.
I love a good lawnmower, but these days
I've gone a little bit to the dark side. Artificial grass.
Oh, Paddy. I know. Well, hopefully by the end of today,
we'll have you back to where you should be.
Well, fingers crossed, you know, cos, uh,
every time I see Chris Packham, he looks at me in disgust.
So these are the decks?
These are the aluminium decks
that we use... Oh, yeah. ..to create the main part of the lawnmower.
And instantly recognisable for me, that. Yeah.
Now, why aluminium?
With aluminium, it doesn't rust. It'll last you a lifetime.
Are these done on site?
These are done off site in Asia.
So, just looking at the gubbins,
I suppose the main things in there
are obviously the blade and the roller. That's right.
So you can see on the underside
there's a lot of engineering. The rear roller goes here,
the engine gets mounted there, and then the blade
sits right in the middle and sweeps round the cutting chamber here.
Well, what we need to do now is get this ready for paint,
so we're going to take this over to the paint line over there
and get it hung up.
Even aluminium mowers need painting
to prevent corrosion in the British climate.
Here we go. Here we are.
Let's hop on here, Paddy. Yeah.
And clicking them in there? That's it. Just hooks into there.
And they make their way round to the first station to get cleaned up,
ready to get painted. Send them off, pal. Let's go.
Let's go!
You gotta have a bit of authority in your voice, Richard.
Time to start the stopwatch...
..as the decks head off at quite a leisurely speed,
I have to say.
Can we have a look at where they paint it, then?
We'd like you to help out, Paddy,
but you might want to cover yourself up a bit.
Flippin' 'eck! Is it going to be that messy? Just a little bit.
I've done a bit of painting and cutting in at home.
What's going on here? This kind of paint, Paddy,
is quite different to what you're used to at home.
Do you know what? I was enjoying today,
cos I can see the whites of your eyes,
I've not got all the PPE on.
But just as I get out, they drag me back in again.
And I'll tell you something now, Ruth Goodman, our historian,
will not have to put up with this.
She'll be swanning about at the minute
in some manor house, living the dream.
There you go. Told you.
300 years ago, grand lawns were not really a thing.
Posh country houses had straight gravel paths,
box hedging in elaborate patterns.
And they don't come much posher
than the magnificent 18th-century Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
To find out how these formal grounds were transformed
by a very special gardener, I'm meeting historian Kate Felus.
Hello. Hi, Ruth. Lovely to see you.
What a wonderful patterned sort of a garden this is.
Isn't it amazing? Very, very formal.
But this is just a fraction of what was here.
Here's a plan from 1717
which shows the scale of the Great Parterre.
So what we're in is just that little piece there?
It's tiny in comparison. This is vast! Yeah.
The Great Parterre
was 30 times larger than today's patterned garden.
And this was built to emulate French gardens.
So it was like Versailles of England.
But I want to show you what it looks like today.
OK. Follow me.
Oh, it's all gone.
It's all gone. All ripped out.
And what you get instead is this beautiful sweep of lawn.
The kind of embodiment of the English landscape style,
they called it. It was a reaction against the French gardens
of the earlier century.
Here you get simplicity.
The 4th Duke of Marlborough had grown tired of the fussy,
formal French style he'd inherited at Blenheim Palace.
And so in 1764 the Duke employed the celebrity gardener of the day,
Capability Brown, to transform his vast estate.
The lavish project cost the equivalent of over £2 million
and took ten years to complete.
He did an awful lot of tree planting.
He created the lake around the other side of the palace,
and here, particularly, he got rid of the Great Parterre.
So the scale of the job of removing it was absolutely vast.
The original Great Parterre was ten times the size of the palace.
But undaunted,
Capability Brown swept it away.
Hundreds of tonnes of stone, gravel and hedging were hauled off
by as many as 1,000 labourers.
It's all done by hand with men with shovels and wheelbarrows.
It's before steam, even,
let alone the sort of machinery that we have today.
They did have horse power
which was used to plough the soil before grass seed was sown.
When finished, the results were spectacular...
..with both the front and back of the palace framed by vast lawns.
So this is about celebrating
those elements of the English countryside, the greenness of it?
Absolutely. With the fields, the grass, this openness.
The trees, the hills.
Real, quintessential Englishness.
And these long vistas.
I mean, they're busily saying, "I own all this."
But the 60 acres of newly created grass
did leave the Duke with a bit of a problem.
How on earth are they cutting a lawn on this sort of scale?
Before the invention of the mechanical lawnmower,
you had this very clever invention called sheep.
BLEATING
Right.
And they can graze it quite short, down to about five centimetres.
But you wouldn't want the sheep wandering into your house,
would you? No, you wouldn't.
But equally, you wouldn't want to see a fence.
So here he used this wonderful invention -
the ha-ha. The ha-ha.
A ditch but with a wall on one side, so it's a sheer face. Exactly.
But it's invisible in the landscape.
It looks as if this lawn just carries on for ever.
That's the whole trick of it. And you get to the edge
and you realise at the last minute that it's there.
"Aha!" you say.
Hence the word ha-ha.
But with sheep banished from the lawns near the house,
and the invention of the mechanical lawnmower some 60 years away,
the Duke had to employ a large team of gardeners,
whose sole job was to keep the lawns short, using scythes.
How many people would you need
to be able to keep a lawn scythed like that?
Well, the Duke had 80 outdoor servants,
and probably 35 of them
were employed just on the South Lawn here.
I mean, talk about a status symbol. Exactly.
And that is hard work.
But it's skilled as well. They could judge it just right.
So the grass would be about three centimetres.
Same as a modern mechanical lawnmower.
After the grass was cut,
there would be weeder women who would come out regularly
and they would pull out those last weeds.
And then it would be rolled.
And all of that for a lawn? Absolutely.
But it has its uses. You can play cricket out here.
You can have big parties.
And really, the lawn became the height of fashion.
King George III was so impressed by the view of the lawn
when he visited Blenheim in 1786 that he demanded one of his own.
And soon Buckingham Palace had a perfectly manicured lawn
for royal garden parties.
And then we all wanted one.
PADDY: We can but dream, Ruth. We can but dream.
Back at the factory, things are moving on.
The bodies of my lawnmowers have been cleaned with phosphoric acid
to remove dust,
and sprayed with a protective primer.
And I've got me own protective coating
to have a go at painting them.
# Spaceman
# I always wanted you to go into space, man... #
Look at the state of that. I look like I'm breaking out of an egg.
# Spaceman
# I always wanted you to go into space, man... #
I look like a cross between Buzz Aldrin and a Teletubby.
RICHARD CHUCKLES
Lead on.
You can never be too careful. Say no more.
That's all right for Richard - he doesn't have to wear it.
# Spaceman, spaceman Spaceman, spaceman... #
The decks are sprayed by both human hands and robot arms.
Not with traditional paint, but a plastic polymer powder
which provides a strong, weather-resistant coating.
Would you like to have a go? Well, Richard,
I've not spent a half hour getting all this on for nothing.
Is me oxygen on? Yeah. You're on and running.
Beautiful. Right.
It's Jordan Edwards's job to make sure every deck is covered
with a precise 0.1mm layer of polymer powder.
You all right, Jordan? So, what am I doing, pal?
Right, you can see the exposed areas of the aluminium cast. Oh, yeah.
All you want to do is fill in the nooks and the crannies
and then you're all done. Beautiful, beautiful. Right, here we go.
Hey, I tell you what, there's some bits in there.
It's quite good, this, actually.
Just finding bits...
As the green powder leaves the nozzle of the paint gun,
it's given a negative electrostatic charge...
Get that, under there, hidden away, right under t'rim.
Get stuck in.
..which causes it to cling tightly to the aluminium surface,
perfectly coating the deck.
How's that looking? Have I missed any bits, pal?
Absolutely perfect, Paddy. You're all done.
I've got to say, I think you've got the best job here.
That's beltin', that. I love that.
It's quite therapeutic. Yeah. Relaxing.
I'm going to go again. I'm going to go again.
Relax. Get yourself a cup of tea, pal.
While I lose myself in powder-coating heaven...
..our rather dull decks
travel through what looks like a giant doner kebab grill.
Inside, they're blasted with 300-degree Celsius heat,
melting the polymer powder coating
to give a smooth and toughened finish.
And 1.5 hours into lawnmower production...
We've got a glossy, deep-green weatherproof deck.
Oh, look at these.
This is a beautiful colour.
Looking good, aren't they, Paddy? Look at the finish on them.
They're looking absolute top drawer.
Yeah. Beautiful.
If you just give me a hand with that, Paddy. Of course, yeah.
And we'll just lower it into the box. Lower it in.
Shall I give you a push? Let's go.
From the painting area,
our decks travel to the start of the assembly line.
It's the beating heart of the factory...
..where a team of highly skilled workers...
..busily attach over 80 different components.
Along the line, there are six main stations
to construct different sections of the mower...
..each one crewed by a specialist worker
who has six minutes to do their bit...
..assembling their specific parts onto each deck...
..before rolling it down the line to the next stage.
It all seems to run like clockwork.
Here we are.
I hope I don't put a spanner in the works.
This is the first stage where we put the decks and the engines together.
Our mower features a 159cc petrol engine.
It'll power the rotary cutting blade
and drive the roller at the back,
propelling the machine forward.
The man responsible for attaching this vital component is Yip.
Nice to meet you, Yip.
I realise I'm extending a handshake as you're mid-screw there.
Carry on screwing.
If we use car analogies here, would you say this particular mower
is like the Bentley of the factory?
Rolls-Royce, mate. Rolls-Royce?! Yeah. Beautiful.
It's not quite a Rolls-Royce,
but this engine has 4.5 horsepower,
roughly the same as a moped,
which is more than enough to propel the mower
and spin the cutting blade 46 times every second.
This is a bit of me, I love owt like this.
Would you like to do the next one, Patty? Do you know what?
I'd love to. I'll get out your way.
Oh, that's nice, he's gone! Right, show us how it's done, pal.
Well, first of all, we got two stickers.
This is a Rolls-Royce. I've gotta get it absolutely bang-on.
Not bad for your first attempt. If you'd like to lift this engine
and put it on the actual case over there. Right, OK.
What wight is that? About five, six kilos.
Five?! Maybe more.
It's about 12. You've worked here too long.
Your arms are too strong. That way? That's right, yes.
Got that in there, yeah. Smashing.
Feel a bit like the F1 team here when it comes in for a pit stop,
but we're doing a little bit more on it.
Should be absolutely perfect, them, cos I've painted 'em.
Three 30mm toughened steel bolts...
Tell you what, I'm enjoying this.
..is all it takes to attach the engine.
That's it. Just finish off these now. Oh, these.
It's not quite as quick as a Formula 1 pit stop...
There you go. Got it, yeah.
..but if I don't get this done within six minutes,
I'll be holding up the whole production line.
Great bit of kit, this.
You know what I love? That.
No putting it down. Up in the air.
Little bit of grease on the front axle. Yeah.
This axle is where the front wheels will attach later.
I can see why it's only six minutes, you work quick.
Done. Clear. Off it goes. Thanks very much for that, pal.
Thank you. I'll see you in a little bit.
This factory is so calm and well organised.
Everything's in its place, just ready to go.
Gorgeous!
All geared up to make mowers fit for our back gardens.
But when it comes to grass for top-level sport,
how do the pros do it?
Cherry, the lucky rascal, is finding out.
I've got some pretty amazing access
to a little football ground you may have heard of.
It is the home of English football.
It is the one and only Wembley Stadium.
Over the decades, this famous ground
has witnessed the highs and lows of our national sport...
..with some of the greatest players in the history of the game...
..taking centre stage on its hallowed turf.
I've been given a very special invitation
to come and see how they prepare the ground for the FA Cup final.
In just a few days, 90,000 fans will greet the players
as they emerge from the famous Wembley tunnel.
Oh, my goodness me.
Wow.
This is epic.
And the man in charge of making sure it's all pitch perfect
for the big match is grounds manager Karl Standley.
Well, this is kind of amazing.
Karl, so nice to meet you. Welcome. How are you?
I feel like I've died and I've gone to grass heaven.
Thank you very much.
We're getting it ready for the busiest time of the year.
There are millions of blades of grass out there.
Each one of them has to be perfect. It's so vibrant.
How do you grow this grass?
It's the Wembley pitch, actually grown in sand. Oh, wow.
Why do you grow it in sand? It's a winter sports pitch.
So in the wintertime it rains.
You want to be pushing water through it.
What would happen if this was grown just on a soil base?
It would be very much a mud bath. Yeah.
And is this the grass growing here?
No. So this is polyethylene plastic fibres.
Isn't that cheating? So the reason we have plastic in here,
a very small amount, is that when the grass actually germinates,
a root comes out of it. And the idea is that root actually wraps itself
around this plastic, which goes down 55mm.
And that's what gives you the stability
which allows us to do multiple games.
Oh, I see, it's almost like scaffolding for the grass.
Very much so, yeah.
Unlike this small sample,
the Wembley pitch is created on a massive scale...
..at a turf nursery in a top-secret location.
Grown for three months,
it's 95% real grass with soil and sand
and 5% plastic.
Every year, after a summer of concerts,
the old pitch is ripped up, with the plastic recycled into benches,
and the brand-new pitch is laid out
using 720 1.2-metre-wide rolls.
It takes just five days to install.
Once you've laid it down, is it happy as Larry?
No, it's not. It's like growing grass in a giant shoe box.
So for six months of the year, the one thing we need is sunlight.
So we have artificial lighting systems
that actually roll out onto the playing surface.
We have an undersoil heating pipe so we can constantly keep the pitch
at around about 16 degrees throughout the winter.
That is so bougie. In the summer,
we have to have an irrigation system that we can water the pitch.
The surface is mown every day
and three times on the morning of the FA Cup final.
Karl, how does everyone know where to go?
You see some strings down the playing surface,
and that's how we keep the lines really straight.
Why don't you just have a great big ride-on mower?
Well, first of all, it's more weight on the playing surface,
which you're trying to keep away from.
And also you don't really get the feel of the playing surface.
They could be cutting, they could be looking at what they're doing,
and then suddenly you see an area of, "OK, there's an issue there,
"a problem there. We can sort that."
It takes a total of 12 miles of walking
to cut the Wembley pitch just once...
..pushing 34-inch-wide specialist electric mowers
with razor-sharp teeth
that cut each blade of grass to precisely 23mm.
These mowers are also equipped with large rollers
to create those iconic Wembley stripes.
Imagine it's the day of the FA Cup final.
It's a huge day. High pressure. What's your routine?
First thing is we walk the pitch.
Look at any issues, concerns, and then we start to prep the pitch.
So we have to add a little bit of water to the playing surface
to put a little bit of slickness on the surface.
So when the ball slicks across the surface,
it gives it speed, and that's what the players want.
And then suddenly we're in game mode.
The noise erupts. You then realise, "My God, this job's pretty cool."
CROWD CHANTS
That must be the most incredible feeling.
I sit there with my cup of tea and I watch the game.
And then throughout the game, I'll just move around to each corner,
watching how the pitch is performing.
I mean, Karl, to me, it looks completely pristine.
But what about you? Do you think it's ten out of ten?
I think there's only one way you've gotta find out
and that's by you giving it a quick run.
# It's coming home It's coming home
# It's coming
# Football's coming... #
I think it's perfect. Thank you. I'll tell the grounds team. Thanks.
# Three lions on a shirt... #
PADDY: Oh, you jammy so-and-so. Wembley Stadium!
CROWD CHEERS
You know what, Cherry gets all the best gigs.
When I'm watching football at home, right, I'm watching the football,
but I should imagine you're sat looking at the pitch.
What would you say is your best pitch to look at where you go,
"That's a lovely cut"?
I'm a bit of a fan of what they do at the West Ham stadium.
Olympic Stadium, lovely ground, lovely pitch.
On our lawnmower assembly line,
Yip is busy bolting engines to the decks...
..and at the next station, the lads are adding a plastic chute
that will carry the grass cuttings from the blade
to the collection bag.
But next comes the key to getting those stadium-quality lawn stripes
at home -
the roller,
which sits at the back
instead of rear wheels
and is held in place
by a roller frame
made from 11 separate steel components.
Production of the frame
begins away from the assembly line, at the laser cutter.
So if we want to put that big stripe on our lawn,
we need to hold a roller on the back of the mower.
Do you know, I think when you say about the stripes on the lawn,
there's certain things in life that are just heaven,
and a good stripe on a lawn, honestly, as boring as it sounds,
I could literally sit with a cup of tea just looking at it.
The framework for the roller starts life
as a 5mm-thick sheet of steel.
Inside the cutting machine,
a 5-kilowatt laser begins to carve out multiple end brackets.
Just like a knife through butter, that. It is.
It works with a near-infrared light wave
that comes from a laser generation unit in the corner.
It beams down through the unit, down to a lens, that then focuses
all of that laser energy...
VOICE FADES
Now, to translate Doctor Spock here,
the laser heats the molecules in the steel to 1,500 Celsius,
enough to melt and precisely cut the steel.
Here we go. Set your phasers to stun.
It's just mind-blowing. Quite hypnotic, actually.
Looks very effortless, doesn't it? Yeah.
In just over one hour,
the laser makes parts for 54 roller frames.
There they are.
When I look at the thickness of that,
it amazes me how it cuts through it so effortlessly.
Yeah. We've got a lovely, lovely clean cut around here.
Oh, look at that! Fantastic.
We'll get them all together and take them down to the welding shop.
Perfect. Let's do it.
Three steel bracket plates from the laser cutter,
along with eight other components,
are clamped onto a jig,
which holds the pieces in place...
..ready to be welded together.
So, Paddy, here's our welder, our robot welder.
Who named her Betty?
Ah, always been known as Betty. Lost in the mists of time.
OK.
A pre-programmed robot goes around and puts everything together
and does the full weld.
On Betty's robot arm
is a hot torch which melts copper-coated steel wire
into the joints of the roller frame...
..permanently welding the 11 pieces together
in just three minutes.
You can see that all of these welds have been put neatly into place
round all of the rods, with the magic hot torch.
Yeah. Here, here and here.
All nice and bonny. And ready for the next step. Correct.
Smashing. See you later, Betty.
Didn't reply to me.
Once Betty's done her thing,
the roller frames are sprayed black
with the same kind of polymer powder we used for the decks.
And after being fired in the kebab grill and then cooled,
they're ready for the all-important roller.
These are made from glass reinforced plastic.
And why are the little ridges in there? To give traction.
These rollers are driven by the engine
and that drives the machine along.
Love that. Who's this, by the way? This is Dave.
How are you, Dave? We've got a bit of a malfunction with this roller.
Oh, we've come at the wrong time.
Don't worry, Dave, it's not as though it's on the telly.
You're the man to fix it.
Dave connects the rollers together so they'll spin smoothly,
which sometimes takes careful adjustment.
Have you sorted that out, Dave? Sorted. Top man.
So now he's applying grease into those mechanisms.
Here at Dave's station, the roller is even fitted with a gearbox
which will be connected to the engine via a chain.
Once fired up, it'll send power to the roller,
propelling the mower forward at various speeds.
It reminds me a little bit like when you go to somewhere like McLaren.
Mm-hm. So they're working on an F1 car and everything's just calm.
Yeah. People are getting on with it. Clean work areas. Yeah.
It's great to see.
I'm telling you now, the longer I spend here,
the more I want to get back to having a real lawn.
Is that you done, Dave? It is, mate. Fantastic.
Dave, F1's loss is lawnmowers' gain. Beautiful.
Back on the main assembly line,
Keith has the job of installing the roller and frame
onto the underside of the deck.
It's connected to the engine...
..and then it's on to Paul...
..who fixes two wheels onto the axle.
And with those front wheels on,
we're ready for the cutting-edge part of the assembly.
This is where Paul is putting on the blades.
The SHARP end of the factory! Indeed it is. Yes. Well done.
So this is your cutting blade,
and you can see that it's got the cut edge put on the tip there.
It's not very sharp, though. No, but it doesn't need to be.
Only that section of the blade
really does all of the work while it's spinning through the grass
as you're walking forwards. OK.
If you think this thing is turning at 2,800 rpm,
around sort of 180mph, that tip speed,
and it's the speed of that impact that really does a lot of the work.
Yeah. I don't think any blades of grass are standing up
if that's hitting it at 180 like that.
You were pretty quick there, Paul.
How long does it take you to do that?
30 seconds? Oh, my word.
He's throwing them out.
There's a new one for you, pal. Thank you very much.
Get that on there.
I mean, looking at the inside of that,
how do you develop it to cut so well?
We use the same kind of aeronautical software
they use to design Formula 1 wings on cars.
So we will model the shape of the deck,
the shape of the blade, the shape of the wings
to cut that grass and get it up that chute and into the grass bag.
The blade has wings on its edges,
which creates suction and pushes air upwards,
lifting freshly mown grass away from the cutting area
and into a collection bag at the back of the mower.
Right, well, I've been in here all morning.
Not being rude, Richard, but you've not offered me a cup of tea yet.
Sorry. So let's get the kettle on. Milk, no sugar.
So while Richard brews up
and our mowers travel to the next station on the line,
Ruth's getting to grips with the history
of a very different kind of lawn-cutting machine -
the hover mower.
Oh! You all right there, Ruth?
Oh!
The very first mechanical lawnmower, invented in 1830,
was such a beast that it took two people to operate it.
Ready, Clive? One, two, three, Go!
Ah!
It used a cutting blade on a cylinder
powered by a heavy roller, and a lot of push and pull.
London Zoo
even tried using camels to help,
and early steam and petrol mowers,
introduced in the 1890s,
also proved cumbersome.
But fast-forward through the decades to the 1960s...
# It's all too beautiful... #
..when the suburbs were expanding with new homeowners,
all desperate to create perfectly cut lawns.
And suddenly a new lightweight mower landed on the scene...
Hello, madam. I've come to demonstrate
the revolutionary Flymo lawnmower.
..complete with a free demo.
So the Flymo is totally revolutionary.
Lawnmower historian Clive Gravett
has certainly learnt the salesman's patter.
You've got no rollers, no wheels,
and it just simply floats on a cushion of air.
IT was invented by Karl Dahlman in 1963.
He was inspired by Cockerell's hovercraft.
The hovercraft had made global headlines
with its first successful crossing of the English Channel in 1959.
It could float across water and hover over land
using a unique jet propulsion system.
A Flymo, cos it's a flying mower!
We've got a petrol engine
and you have these vents where air is sucked in.
Yeah. And an impeller goes round underneath. An impeller...
Oh, that's what this disk is.
And that pushes the air down, creating a cushion of air.
And the blade obviously also going around to actually cut the grass.
Apparently, Karl Dahlman experimented with a dustbin lid.
And then you can hover in any direction.
So no more straight lines, you can... You can go round.
You can even go round in a circle.
It just floats on air.
It is a completely different way of thinking about lawn mowing.
Every man could have his own hovercraft in the garden.
But despite an initial flurry of excitement,
most blokes soldiered on with their traditional heavy roller mowers.
So in the early 1970s,
attention was turned to the women of the home
when Swedish consumer goods company Electrolux
marketed an all-new, fully electric hover mower
in flexible, colourful, lightweight plastic.
Top advertising executive Rosie Arnold...
Welcome to the 1970s.
THEY LAUGH
..believes the fashionable women of the '70s... Cheers.
..gave this mower lift-off.
So what was it about the Flymo
that turned it into the brand that we know today?
What they'd identified at that time was a new market of housewives.
In the house, there were so many new gadgets.
There were vacuum cleaners,
there were washing machines, there were blenders.
It was all about speed, convenience.
That was the way the world was going.
And they identified that women were the major buyers of these things.
Right. And they thought, "Why not talk about the garden?"
So how are they doing this, then?
I think, you know, one of the first ads here,
"Jenny, you're not a grass widow again?" And it says,
"You're not going to tell us
"your husband still has that old tank of a mower?"
So that's leading straight in to that idea about this big,
archaic, masculine machine,
whereas this is this light thing that even a woman can use.
My eyes are drawn to this one, I have to say,
and that's mostly because I want that dress.
THEY LAUGH
Doesn't she look wonderful? "So little effort, in fact,
"that when it arrives, you and your lawn are both looking good."
It's a very odd thing, isn't it? This is being marketed at women,
and yet, to our modern ears, is patronising as heck.
What you have to remember is that it was men doing the advertising.
So in these mid-'70s adverts,
I noticed that the mower itself is blue.
The story goes that they were doing a research group amongst housewives,
and they all got together and asked for it to be changed
to the much more fashionable orange,
cos at the time orange was massively fashionable.
So we've got the Space Hopper and the Dukes Of Hazzard car.
It was an IT colour.
# Everyone's a winner, baby That's no lie... #
And, actually, it was a stroke of marketing genius
because it set it aside from all the other mowers that were out there.
So that, combined with advertising to women,
you'd got an absolute killer strategy.
And after 1977,
all Flymos were orange.
Marvellous. Oh!
I think we have lift-off.
By the end of the 1980s, the orange hover was making up
a third of all lawnmower purchases across the UK and Europe.
SHOUTING OVER THE ENGINE: And it's all thanks to a Swede
with a fascination for the hovercraft.
That's OK, Ruth, we can hear you.
Nearly there, pal.
I've been pepped up with a nice brew.
And after nearly 3.5 hours,
our mowers are rolling along the assembly line...
..where work starts on the upper body...
..with the addition of a mechanism
to adjust the cutting height of the grass.
But I'm off in search of a secret.
This is where they keep Cherry Healey's dental records.
Various teeth she puts in and out.
What's behind these curtains?
Like a Kubrick movie, this.
Never look in there.
The secret I'm looking for is how to mow those perfect stripes.
And for that, I need to head out into the sunshine.
Oh, beautiful.
# I'm walking on sunshine
# Whoa-oh!
# I'm walking on... # Oh, at last.
This is what we're talking about. Yeah.
# And don't it feel good, hey! #
This is one of our test fields, Paddy.
I've been on loads of test tracks. This is me first test field.
What's the optimal height for good stripe-age?
Well, for stripes, you actually need a little bit of length
left in the grass, because it's the bending of the grass
that gives you that striped effect.
All them years we've struggled, and that's the answer -
a bit longer in length.
According to Richard, for the best stripes,
set your blade height to cut the grass at 4cm to 6cm.
Pull up the handle, then pull the engine start.
Right, OK, then. Right.
A pull cord...
ENGINE STARTS
..sparks the engine to life.
Push on there and you'll be away.
Squeezing the handlebar engages the gears in the roller,
propelling it forward.
Oh.
Beautiful! Look at that!
Feels as smooth as silk.
Tripod, that. Might want to get rid of that off the lawn.
Occupational hazard.
Shall I go back up the other way, get the stripe going? Yeah.
# We're all going on a summer holiday
# No more working for a week or two... #
Oh, now we're motoring.
I am here for this.
Oh, what a treat.
The mower weighs 47kg,
which pushes down on the roller, creating the stripes.
Oh, my God.
THEY LAUGH
I've got two bad lines. At least it's consistent.
And I'm getting the two different colours. You are.
When the grass is bent away from you,
you get a lot of light reflecting back from the blades.
That looks like a light-green stripe.
When the grass is bent towards you,
you're looking down the ends of the tips of the blades of grass,
that gives you the dark stripe.
I honestly thought it was how low you put your mower.
Not at all. No, the lower you go, the worse the stripe you'll get.
# The mornin' It's my lawnmower, lawnmower
# The afternoon My lawnmower, lawnmower... #
I think that's a bit better, Paddy.
Well, I could happily spend the day here on me own
testing lawnmowers.
If you're looking for someone, I'm your man.
You're more than welcome. Thank you.
# Look in awe at my lawnmower
# With jealousy and awe at my lawnmower... #
Oh, it's so satisfying.
Hey, don't walk on the stripes, Mike.
Straight across my handiwork.
Oh, sacrilege.
PADDY LAUGHS
All right, shall we head back inside? You can, Richard.
I'm just going to have another five minutes here looking at me stripes.
Go on, pal, I won't be long. Fair enough.
Mmm!
Gorgeous.
Surely you can't beat this, Cherry?
Well, actually, I think I can - with a day trip to sunny Cambridge.
This is so beautiful.
The historic buildings, the punting.
But look at that perfect, gorgeous lawn
stretching all the way down to the river.
But I'm not here for a lesson on how to look after your lawn.
I'm actually here for a lesson in how to NOT mow your lawn.
They've had a finely manicured lawn here
behind the King's College Chapel for over 250 years,
but now a large section of it has been transformed.
Wow.
All under the watchful eye of botanist Dr Cicely Marshall.
Hi, Cicely. Hi, Cherry. Welcome to our wild flower meadow.
Why did you decide to dig up half of the lawn
of this iconic setting and grow a meadow?
It's been a fine lawn since 1772.
And in 2019, we wondered if we could make more of the area for nature.
We've lost 97% of our species-rich grasslands in this country,
mainly through intensified agriculture.
We also wanted to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions.
We also thought it would be beautiful.
It is absolutely stunning.
What plants can I see here?
Well, we've got a species that are typical of hay meadow,
so things like the carrot... I recognise that. ..the oxeye daisy,
the field scabious... Beautiful, those purple ones. Yeah. Stunning.
The slightly pinker, that's greater knapweed.
I mean, the difference is so stark.
Here, you've got this explosion of flowers.
And then you've got almost nothing else except grass on here.
The meadow was created by scattering
a mix of local East Anglian wild flower seeds
and then letting nature do its thing.
Incredibly, 51 of the 84 plant species here today
flew in on the wind or were dormant under the grass all along.
Tending to this huge variety of plants is gardener Charlotte Waters.
I mean, this is so stunningly beautiful.
How is it that when I've tried to grow wild flowers at home,
nothing's happened? So I think your key is the yellow rattle.
And you need yellow rattle to help establish the flowers,
because the yellow rattle helps break down the grass growth.
The yellow rattle competes with the root of the grass
to stunt the growth of the grass,
which means the flowers can then thrive.
So it's thanks to this little plant
that we have all of this and all this diversity? Yeah.
What are your favourite things growing in the meadow?
So it has to be a bee orchid, because they're so rare.
And when they arrive, it's just... Everyone gets excited.
And it's like the gossip around the college
that there's a bee orchid in the meadow.
It may look gorgeous, but have these wild flowers
really provided more food and shelter for wildlife?
To find out, I'm joining a group of volunteers
who monitor how the biodiversity differs
between the meadow and the lawn.
I mean, on the mowed lawn, I can see there's not much action happening.
But the minute you step into the wild meadow,
just a couple of sweeps with my net...
Oh, yeah. Mother Nature is having a party.
Look at that. It's absolutely teeming with life.
Hello, Jiminy Cricket.
As well as using nets to capture and release sun lovers
like grasshoppers and butterflies, UV light insect traps
are set up overnight to monitor nocturnal critters.
Oh, fun. Look at this.
Oh. This is a June bug, which is a type of chafer beetle.
Oh, look. What's that? That is a heart and club.
Heart and club. We've got a caddisfly,
a moth, a beetle and a mayfly.
So that's four different insect orders,
which really shows the sort of diversity that we're getting.
We have a rather wonderful feast here.
Look at this. Look at that.
Oh, my goodness me. It's an elephant hawk moth.
That's a moth?! I had no idea they came multicoloured.
It looks like something from a tropical country.
This is absolutely beautiful.
We've got 2,500 species of moths in Britain.
The flat lawn gives them nowhere to hide. But that lovely rough,
sort of three-dimensional architecture of the meadow
makes a big difference. They make really good food for bats as well.
What, he does? Yeah. No, don't say that!
She didn't mean it.
So is it working? Is the wild flower meadow
attracting more diverse plant and animal species? Absolutely it is.
The results of the study have so far revealed
over three times more bugs and bats in the meadow,
which now creates a vital wildlife corridor in the city.
And no mowing has also reduced carbon emissions.
What can we do at home to create something like this?
Well, a simple thing you can do is just to stop mowing your lawn
and see what you've got. And you might find
your lawn is more species rich than you think it is.
So more diverse flowers, more diverse animals,
a happier ecosystem. Yeah.
If letting our lawns grow wild
means attracting more beauties like this, I say let it grow.
PADDY: Yeah, that does look nice, Cherry.
But some lawnmowers are absolute beauties, too.
A proper mower!
PADDY WHOOPS
Having fun? Yes! Oh, well. Inside time.
Oh!
Party pooper.
Thoroughly enjoyed that. Frankie Dettori.
Luckily, Richard does have some classic power tools inside...
Ah.
Look at that. Proper.
..to lure me back in.
Wow.
This is like being in a toy shop.
Oh!
On the assembly line,
we're ready to finish the fittings on the top of the lawnmower deck.
Here we are. All right, Paddy, this is Marek.
We're just going to put on some of the last parts of the assembly now.
Yeah. So we've got a top cover to go on. We've got one here for you.
Yeah. Stand aside, Marek, I'm going in.
You just lower that cover over the top.
That's it. That's it.
The black plastic cover provides a nice finish
around that all-important height-adjustment lever.
Ohh! We like that.
Little cap on the top of that lever.
More, more, more. More? More.
How's that? Yeah. And you check if...
Don't move these. Ah!
Pretty solid, that. I'll just give it one more.
Yeah. Feels good.
So next stage is handlebars.
If you'd like to pass these over to Marek
and he'll get them fitted up. Yeah. Marek, you're back on, pal.
OK. Good luck. Thank you. Look after her.
Marek installs the steel handlebars,
which can fold away for storage.
And now we've nearly finished, look who's turned up.
Whoo!
All the hard work is done
and Cherry's here to steal the glory.
Ah, here we are.
Ta-da! Look at this. Ain't it beautiful?
So shiny and new!
And I can spin it round like a lazy Susan.
Any chance of Richard putting the handle up for Cherry?
That's all right, though.
Brilliant, that. This is your final mower, Paddy and Cherry.
Ready to go. Oh, beautiful.
What a piece of kit that is.
And now we've got a shiny finished mower,
I think I'll go and put my feet up
and let Cherry give Gavin a hand boxing up.
We'll put this under the handlebars. There we go.
She looks great. OK. That is one big box.
And it's ready to go in.
OK, here we go. You got to line it up perfectly.
Gavin, she's heavy!
Go on, use your muscles. There we go. And she's in. All right.
Lift her up. Oh, my God. That's it. Don't drop it. Don't drop it.
Down she goes. Perfect.
Whoo!
Nice one, Cherry. Right, let's get these boxes over to dispatch.
We've got a delivery to fulfil.
You all right, Richard? Hey, Paddy. Hey, Cherry.
I'm going to go over there and start boxing these.
Oh, eh-up! That's it. Down.
How many mowers on a lorry like this?
So, with the one that Paddy's been building, we get 96 on a lorry.
Beautiful stuff. Let's wrap her up.
We get up to four lorries a day going out of this site.
Hey...
And on they go, on to the lorry, ready to dispatch.
Not sure the wrapping on that's very good. Who did that one?
Couldn't possibly say.
Oh... Good job. You did so good. Thank you. It looks great.
Beautiful. Hey, Richard.
Thank you so much for showing us round today, pal.
Been a pleasure, Paddy. It's fully loaded.
Get the doors down. Off it goes.
Just 4 hours and 20 minutes after the start of production,
our mowers are leaving the factory.
From Hertfordshire, they head out all over the UK and Ireland,
ready to make neighbours green with envy over perfectly mown grass.
But as far as I'm concerned,
there's only one way to properly christen a freshly mown lawn.
Yeah.
Wahey!
I tell you what, I've not got real grass at home,
but after spending the day here,
I'm very tempted to get it put back in.
Enjoy. Game on!
Go on.
CHEERING
MUSIC: Parklife by Blur
Oh!
Hey!
Go on, Cherry!
Hey!
Whoo!
THEY LAUGH