Churchill father-of-two Adam Lethborg would get frustrated every time his lawn mower broke down.
Today that is one thing that he does not worry about as he accesses a mower for a day for free.
More than 1000 people from across the Latrobe Valley have used the Morwell Neighbourhood House lawn mower bank since it was established in 2012.
“When I first learned about it my lawn mower was broken,” Mr Lethborg said.
He has been using the lawn mower bank more than a year ago.
Morwell Neighbourhood House manager Tracie Lund said the house had six mowers in its Beattie Crescent office with four available to the public and two kept for emergencies or if one of the mowers gets bogged while in use.
Ms Lund said the idea behind the lawn mower bank came up six years ago in response to addressing barriers that prevented people from maintaining their lawns.
“To address that, along with St Vincent de Paul, we put a lawn mower in here and made it free for anyone to access,” she said.
Ms Lund said the mowers can be accessed by anyone including those who are not residents of Morwell.
“We’ve mowed over 1000 lawns across the Latrobe Valley so we made sure that this service is not postcode discriminating, it wasn’t just for Morwell,” she said.
Ms Lund said the program ran on a trust system where borrowers were expected to return the machines because “they don’t want others to miss out”.
“There’s community pride and ownership in the lawn mower bank … [it showed] as a community we can come up with our own solutions,” she said.
