Garden pest and disease solutions from Crocus (cat)

It's speedier to suck up the leaf pile with a garden vacuum. The vacuuming process shreds the leaves a little, so they take up less space and rot down faster than whole leaves. Some blowers convert to vacuums, saving you the expense of buying two machines, but find out how easy it is to convert from one mode to another. Some have to have to be partly dismantled and reassembled, but Flymo's Gardenvac, for example, is simple to switch modes with a lever. Hand-held petrol-engined blower/vacs cost from around £90 and are made by a number of companies, which you'll see if you go to one of the online garden equipment web sites.

If contemplating clearing very large areas of lawn and other flat surfaces, then a wheeled leaf and litter vac is much easier to use. You might track down a mains electric version, but petrol-engined machines are more common and widely available from groundsman's suppliers and online (costing from around £450). Most have an optional extra wander hose (from around £100) for beds and borders inaccessible to the machine.