With a mixture of laurel, hawtorn and conifer hedge surrounding my house on 3 sides I have a lot of cutting to do each year and as a result, a large amount of clippings to dispocse of. The first year I spent ages trying to fit them into the green waste recycling bags supplied by the council, but with most of the longer bits being 3 foot long I ended up having to cut them again to get them in.

I'd seen garden shedders before and thought this would be the answer and from a good brand such as Black & Decker I was hoping to massively reduce the amount of time taken to clear up after a day of hedge cutting.

Oh dear, I have never experienced a product so pointlessly inadequate before. It comes in pieces with easy to follow instructions for assembly and has a plastic 'prodder' for poking the cuttings down into the teeth of the cutting disc. That's the good parts of the shedder dealt with, now to the bad.

It would be quicker to cut up lengths of hedge cutting with a pair of nail clippers. The disc that spins to cut through the twigs jams very easily meaning you have to switch off, open up the machine, clear the blockage, close the machine and start again. Repeat this every 2 minutes and it soon becomes clear the GS1800 is not fit for purpose.

Apparently this will handle branches over an inch thick, I haven't tested it on anything over 1/2 inch and it did so badly I think anything bigger would be a waste of time trying.

I have given up on garden shredders as a result of this model, I don't know if any other makes are better but I know they would struggle to be any worse.