Shoppers can save £32 on the Leaf Chief this Black Friday.
One of my most dreaded chores in the garden is tackling fallen leaves – with trees overhanging both sides of our narrow plot, the task feels never-ending come autumn. And it appeared to arrive sooner than usual this year, following the recent storm Boelo which brought gusts of up to 85mph in certain parts of the country.
I’m always tempted to leave them be and let nature do its thing, but according to recent advice from one of the nation’s most celebrated gardeners – Alan Titchmarsh – it’s important to clear away the leaves from the lawn, because they deny the grass of crucial light and air, which can trigger fungus diseases. Speaking on his YouTube channel earlier this month, he added: “”The sooner you clear them up, the better it is for your garden.”
So when I discovered a leaf-clearing gadget being praised by shoppers for “Taking all the hard work out of clearing the lawn,” we were keen to give it a try in our own garden. The Drew&Cole Leaf Chief is billed as “a vacuum for your garden” that promises to “make quick work of fallen leaves”.
Buy the Drew&Cole Leaf Chief
The Drew&Cole Leaf Chief is down to £68.40 with this clever deal stack
The leaf and grass collector operates manually by pushing it back and forth across the garden, activating the built-in plastic rakes and channelling fallen leaves into the included 100L detachable nylon collection bag, meaning gardeners no longer need to spend hours raking into piles and bagging them up, and it carries no running costs unlike a conventional leaf blower.
More gardening deals
Shoppers looking for something with a little more power could consider the Thompson & Morgan 3500W 3-in-1 Leaf Blower Vac and Shredder (£49.99 at QVC) or the Bosch Electric Leaf Blower and Vacuum UniversalGardenTidy 3000 (£64.99 on Amazon), which both vacuum up the leaves to make quick work of clearing the garden.
Black Friday exclusive
The Leaf Chief is available on Yimbly – an online marketplace owned by this site’s parent company Reach plc. Currently reduced from £99.99 to £75.99 on Yimbly for Black Friday, it can be picked up even cheaper for Reach readers with discount code AUTUMN10, giving an extra 10% off. According to Drew&Cole, 291 specially-designed bristles reach out and grab leaves, scooping them into the attached bag for “efficient, hassle-free cleaning”.
When it’s not in use, the Leaf Chief can be stored up and out of the way on a garage wall with the included wall storage bracket. As we don’t have a garage, we haven’t been able to test this, as the accompanying wall plugs were too deep for the garden shed.
The Leaf Chief arrives with some assembly required, but we were up and running within around 15 minutes of unboxing, though the instruction booklet could be improved with better quality images – the existing ones are fairly grainy and small – and we found one of the sets of screws seemed to be numbered incorrectly.
‘Ideal for mature gardeners’
Heading out into the garden, operation was so simple – just push the Leaf Chief up and down the garden and watch as it collects the fallen leaves. We agreed this would make an ideal gift for more mature gardeners or those with reduced mobility, as it means the job can be done without the physical task of raking and having to bend down to bag up the leaves. The height of the handlebar can also be adjusted between a couple of settings, which we found handy when taking turns between myself and my 6ft tall husband using the device.
One caveat we found is that the quality of pickup appears to struggle on uneven sections of the lawn, so that might require more experimentation with the various height settings of the collection head to get the optimal results for our bumpy garden, but after 10 minutes of use, the majority of leaves were picked up, and certainly enough to make sure they don’t suffocate the lawn over winter, so we were very pleased with the results after initial testing.
Easy cleanup
We found tidying up after fairly straightforward too, as the collection bag clips smoothly on and off the Leaf Chief for easy transfer to the garden waste bin (or compost heap if you’re more organised than us). The Leaf Chief also features an adjustable sweeping height so gardeners can customise the raking height to suit the terrain and leaf coverage. This is controlled with a simple dial.
For me, the Leaf Chief appears to be one of those rare products you come across these days – a simple but effective design that does one job really well. Considering that and the bonus that it uses no power, so users don’t need to worry about adding to ever-increasing energy bills, I think it’s a timely buy that will prove incredibly popular with gardeners.
Buy the Drew&Cole Leaf Chief during Yimbly’s Black Friday Sale for £68.40 with code AUTUMN10.