17-07-2025
Want to Start Gardening? These Wirecutter-Approved Tools Will Help You Feel Like a Pro.
This rake is sturdy, well balanced, favored by professional landscapers, and good for years of use. It's well built, though it might be a little heavier than rakes made with bamboo.
Fall leaf cleanup is prime time for a fan rake, but it's useful year-round for everything from cleaning up lawn clippings to gathering cuttings from overgrown hedges.
We like the Ames Jackson Hardwood/Steel Handle Steel Leaf Rake because it's surprisingly sturdy for the price, and the steel tines have enough give to easily comb through thick grass while still snagging loads of yard waste. If your yard has a lot of tree cover, you'll probably break down and buy a leaf blower at some point. Even then, you'll still find ways to use your old rake.
You might also want a bow rake. This type of rake has shorter, stiffer tines than a fan rake, which makes it excellent at smoothing out a bed full of mulch. For finer material, like finished compost or soil, you can flip it around and use the backside for the same task.
Somehow, we don't have a bow rake recommendation at Wirecutter, but we have a few avid gardeners and homesteaders on staff who say that they've never noticed much difference between any of the bow rakes they've used, apart from the benefits of a lightweight, durable fiberglass handle.
This self-propelled lawn mower has a battery that runs for an hour, and it easily mows down overgrown grass. It also spares you the noise, emissions, and maintenance of a typical gas mower. $620 from Walmart
May be out of stock
This category almost seems too obvious to include, but if you have grass, you need a way to cut it, and the best tool for most lawns is a battery-powered lawn mower.
A good cordless mower is much better than any gas option: It doesn't need fuel, it doesn't emit exhaust, and it requires minimal maintenance. In our tests, we found that the Ego LM2156SP Power+ 21″ Select Cut XP Mower was great in just about every way: steering, charging, run time, and mowing power.
You might want to choose a different format if you have a very small or very large lawn, but most people should start their search here.
Mowers can't reach everywhere in your yard, and that's where a string trimmer comes in. It's the quickest way to clean up overgrown grass along fences and around posts or knock down an overgrown but otherwise unmowable area. And most string trimmers let you reuse the same battery and handle with a load of other powered yard tools, such as hedge trimmers, pole saws, tillers, and more, so you'll get a lot of mileage out of the initial purchase.
The Ego ST1511T Power+ 15″ Powerload String Trimmer was among the strongest and quietest string trimmers that we tested, and Ego's battery platform (which also works with our mower pick) is truly excellent.
This article was edited by Megan Beauchamp and Maxine Builder.
Spend more time enjoying your yard and less time working on it with these Wirecutter-expert–approved tools and gadgets.
I love gardening. I hate weeding. Thankfully, I have my trusty hoe by my side.
It's sensible, mostly polite, and the most powerful cordless leaf blower Wirecutter recommends.
