Back in the old days, if you wanted to clip your hedges, you used an over sized pair of scissors to do it. Often times, you left them out in the rain and they got a tad rusty. But they still worked with a little 3-in-1 oil. But then you had to bend over and pick up the clippings and toss them in the garbage.

And Inventor Graham Wilson got tired of not only cleaning up the mess, but of the risk in accidentally electrocuting oneself on a clipped powerline. So he came up with the The Garden Groom Pro, a high tech hedge clipper that also shreads and collects the trimmings. With an innovative safety feature which requires the user to use both hands to operate, and powered by a 430 watt engine, this gadget uses a concealed rotary cutting blade (designed to protect against accidental cutting of electrical cording), hedge clippings are not only cut, they’re shredded down to a 10:1 volume ratio and then deposited into the onboard collector container.

Also included is a hose attachment, which let’s you go beyond the 5 litre size (holding about 8 square yards of clippings) of the collector and places them in a larger volume collection bag (for about 70 square yards of clippings), which is also included. And once finished, the mulched clippings are ideal for gardening and even composting. The Garden groom is capable of cutting all types of hedges and even most branches with up to a 3/8″ thickness.

Voted a Best Buy from Garden Answers Magazine, the Garden Groom Pro costs about $200 ($150 for the mini variant).

Just don’t leave it in the rain.