Garden Shredder Review 'About Us' Page
Welcome to the Garden Shredder Review ‘About Us’ Page.
My name is Keith Longmire. With my wife Jo, I run the Garden Shredder Review. GardenShredderReview.co.uk has been available since 2011. This is a whole new version of the site for 2019. All new because we got hacked early in 2019. The whole site was trashed. – including backups.
In my day job I am an IT consultant. Jo is the gardener. She is a brilliant artist and photographer. I could be a bit biassed so you can see some of her work at jolongmire.com
The Garden Shredder Review – Background
The original site started way back in 2011. We had decided that our garden produced too many clippings to be able to continue ‘bagging and tipping’. We decided to buy a shredder – but which one? There was practically no guidance available on the internet (still true apart from this site).
We tried the usual suppliers. For us that meant B&Q and Homebase. Sadly, the advice we were given was not good. We probably knew more about the basics of Garden Shredders than any of the sales advisors. With no specialist stores close enough to drop into for a quick chat, any information was on the internet or non-existent.
We have a medium (ish) size garden. It runs to around 600 sq metres with patio, pond, lawn and trees. It’s not an overly high-maintenance garden. Most of it is laid to lawn. The major chore comes from the 40m of 3m high, mixed laurel and elm hedging along the road side. On the other side of the garden there is 40m of Laurel hedging (no elm) but this hedge is at least 3m deep.
In all we have 7 trees including 3 Maples, one apple, one plum and a couple I still don’t recognise.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise just how much biomass a garden like this produces – but it was. It seemed that every weekend became a routine of trimming hedges and trees, chopping all the cuttings to an acceptable size for bagging, and multiple trips to the tip for disposal.
The problem was that my day job as an IT consultant meant frequently being away from home. At the weekends I would come home and do my bit with the heavy lifting jobs in the garden. It has to be said – I am no gardener. My skills are more at the heavy lifting end of the scale. I do know how to look after the lawn, cut the hedges and prune the trees. As the garden developed the time taken to dispose of all the clippings seemed to be increasing every week.
Spending my scarce time at home dealing with garden cuttings simply didn’t make sense. A round trip to the tip was 7-8 miles. Putting bags of woody cuttings into the car always seemed to end up with another scratch in the paintwork. Putting that much rubbish into plastic bags for dumping was pretty much insane.
We decided there had to be a better way. We thought we would buy a garden shredder. Trouble was, as you might have found, buying a Garden Shredder in the UK is not that easy.
This site started as a place where we shared all the research we had done to choose our own garden shredder. Rather than reading the whole site you can download our simple guide – “Choosing a Garden Shredder That is Right for You and Your Garden“
Over time we have continued to create reviews of shredders and have written or collated articles on many related topics.
We hope it is still of use to you.
Our Experience in Buying A Garden Shredder
When we made the decision that we needed a shredder my mental image was of one of those used by the local council. These were the very big, noisy machines that you seemed to be able to throw whole trees into and they flew out the other end as chips and dust.
It didn’t take long to realise that the machines used by council work men were a) big, and, b) expensive. For out size of garden, the choice was going to have to be an electric shredder
Despite the relative lack of take up of garden shredders in the UK there were a bewildering range of models on sale. We were keen to know what would work best for us. Frustratingly, as I mentioned earlier, it seemed very difficult to get clear guidance or advice.
As I was away from much of the time I didn’t have the day-to-day distractions of a young family it made sense for me to research our options. Being away, I wrote down my findings so I could share them with Jo. I think it was Jo who said, “If we are having this much difficulty in making up our minds – there must be lots of others who are having trouble too”. Seems like she was right. – My Garden Shredder Review notes formed the basis of the original web site.
Since then there have been times when the site has sat in the background – neglected and forgotten. We would then get emails or coments asking a bunch of questions and I would get my butt in gear and update the site. Over the years it grew to be much bigger and added reviews of many more shredders.
With this latest version of the site I have updated all of the reviews, removed any out of date stuff, and changed the look and feel. Please do use our contact page and let me know your thoughts. We no longer accept comments. Some of the things advertised in web site comments has to be seen to be believed.
Use our reviews to compare garden shredders
Being honest, we don’t pretend that we have personally, physically reviewed all models shown on this site. Obviously, where we have first hand knowledge (usually on the Bosch machines) we will include it. Otherwise our reviews are from research conducted on the internet.
To be included in our reviews each garden shredder normally needs to meet specific criteria:
- More than 20 reviews on Amazon
- Amazon rating 4stars or better
- Other reviews elsewhere on the internet to substantiate the Amazon reviews
Sometimes models will be reviewed that don’t meet all of these criteria. These will be machines that we have used ourselves or have been recommended to us.
Our Pick of Electric Garden Shredder for 2019
Our current top picks are:
- Best Garden Shredder 2019 – Bosch AXT 25TC
- Best Impact Shredder 2019 – Bosch AXT 2200
- Best Quiet Shredder 2019 – Bosch AXT 25D