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We're incredibly happy that, tomorrow, Gardeners' Question Time will be putting their own unique horticultural stamp on A History of the World.

The team will be discussing the gardening objects which they each treasure and considering the influence they may have had on the way we all look after our patch of soil.

However, not all their choices have been a force for good. There wasn't room on the object page for all of Eric Robson's thoughts on his fearsome Allen Scythe. But fortunately we have space to share them with you in full here:

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In a corner of one of my sheds is a machine which I keep as a rusting reminder of the fallibility of professional engineers and designers. What my object demonstrates is that failure as well as success has changed the way we do things. For me the Allen Scythe is quite simply the worst horticultural machine ever made. OK, a quarter of a million of them were sold between 1935 and 1973 but that just goes to prove that one is born every minute.

I can, of course, feel the vibes already. In the furthest corners of the land men with missing fingers and dodgy backs are muttering and attempting to leap from their bed of pain to the Allen Scythe’s defence. Like the Reliant Robin and the earth closet it has its aficionados. But you wouldn’t want to let your daughter marry one.

So let me put them right. The Allen Scythe was a monstrous and useless machine. To make it start needed divine intervention. It wasn’t just a mower; it was a saw bench, compressor and hedge trimmer, a generator and strimmer. It did none of these things well. It mowed worst of all. Its reciprocating knife blades either ripped grass out by the roots (if you were lucky) or piled cut grass onto the front of the machine turning it into a travelling haystack. It had a very nasty habit of running away and you could guarantee that the moment it did was exactly when the metal rod which released the clutch stuck. In this mode it was particularly good at chewing its way through garden fences.

But to be fair, no machine is all bad and the Allen Scythe has one, inescapable redeeming feature. With its dangerously unguarded blades and eccentric ability to ignore the wishes of the man at the controls it’s perfectly placed to give the health and safety branch of the nanny state nightmares.

I think I’ll try to get mine started which will take about a month.

Take a look at all the Gardeners' Question Time objects on their profile page.

What do you think? Add a comment

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