There’s a hedge on our place. It’s quite tall, and made up of a range of different plants.
One of them has spiky leaves. It’s quite aggressive.
I first trimmed the hedge using manual hedge shears.
It was hard work. Took me half of a day. I discovered muscles in my back and arms I didn't know I had. My arms were covered in scratches, and there were two trailer loads of trimmings to take away.
But let me tell you, the hedge looked good.
Today, I trimmed the same hedge in under an hour (including loading the trimmings into the trailer). I cheated though: I used an electric hedge trimmer.
And it doesn’t look as good.
I don’t think the issue is the tools. I think the issue is the attitude.
If I’m going to take half a day and use oversized scissors to cut small trees, it had better be worth it.
But if I’m just going to swing a power tool around for an hour, I’ll take whatever I can get.
Sometimes better outcomes happen because it’s hard.