Person:Ernst Lindner (1)

His parents were both born in Germany. Father was John.

It took tons of work to keep gardens and lawns tidy and it was all done by hand. Teams of gardeners used shears and scythes to cut the grass. And sometimes people put sheep and other livestock on their lawns to keep the grass short by eating it.

Edwin Budding invented the first cylinder (or reel-type) mower back in the 19th century. It was a series of blades arranged around a cylinder with a handle attached to push with. Budding got the idea from a machine used in cloth factories for shearing the nap on velvet. His invention eventually evolved into a mower that you could hitch up behind a horse. But because these mowers were expensive, only rich people could buy them.

By 1885, the United States was building 50,000 lawnmowers a year and shipping them to every country around the world. By the early 1950s, ordinary people could have perfect lawns. Today there's a huge variety of gas and electric powered lawn and garden products, designed to keep our lawns and gardens beautiful.