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.

One of Yorkshire's top tourist attractions

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.

Automower® installed to maintain the property's beautiful grounds

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.

Green energy for environmentally-conscious Harewood House

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.”

Commercial Automower®

Husqvarna has an impressive list of commercial installations across the UK to maintain popular green spaces, ranging from municipalities (Edinburgh, London & Glasgow), botanic gardens, multi-national headquarters, stately homes, sports facilities, zoos and educational establishments.

For more information on the Husqvarna Automower® range visit: http://www.husqvarna.com/uk/products/robotic-lawn-mowers/ and to learn more about Harewood House, please visit: https://harewood.org/