Mayfair Mower Court: The Don of mowing in Hastings reaches 50 years in his growth industry

It’s over 50 years since Don McIntyre turned schoolboy mechanical tinkering into the business in which he’d spend almost his entire working career.

Don McIntyre shows the mower is far from extinct. He’s been in the repairing and retailing of lawnmowers in Hastings for over 50 years. Photo / Paul Taylor.

But it ain’t over yet, the 75-year-old Mayfair Mower Court man says, as he contemplates another day at the Karamu Rd site in Hastings where it started back in the early 1970s.

Like an overgrown lawn, it was a tough task to start off with, as he and wife and nurse Jan, who has done the administration, tried to make it in married life.

But it’s been a growth industry and, at a guess, 20,000 mowers – old, new, prized and on their last legs - have been through the workshop and small showroom that was developed out of an old petrol station.

He reckons that in the first two years he “never drew a wage”, as the business got on to its feet, even needing a borrowed vehicle and trailer to transport mowers, given the couple’s Austin A35 was not really up to the task of heavy lifting.

Clearly as sharp as ever, but now starting the wind-down as he hands the running of the business to long-time staff member Regan Barber, he’s still doing the occasional hand mower and blades, with “two or three” in recent weeks.

“I’m working for him, so it’s good, I’ve still got an interest,” he said.

He never thought of relocating, the shop, with its drive-through frontage harking back to its days dispensing gasoline, now a monument to changing times, next-door to what was rugby and athletics stadium Nelson Park, and is now the big-box, large-format retail domain of such giants as The Warehouse and Mitre 10 Mega.

Where some might have thought the dwarfing might be a bit of hint to go elsewhere, he says the history of service has stood him in good stead, with some customers dropping off their mowers and other mechanical gardening aids before going shopping, and, on a good day, being able to pick them up serviced and ready to go again afterwards.

“They can also drop them off on the way to work, and pick them up on the way home,” he said, the history having been one of opening at least 12 hours a day during the week, 7am to 7pm (and to at least 2pm on Saturdays), to keep a business that mows on despite the trend towards smaller lawns and hiring mowing operators to mow them.

He services them as well, push-job or ride-on, and specialised machines used on cricket pitches and croquet and bowling greens, although the advent of artificial turfs hasn’t been the best for business.

Every now and then he gets the chance to go motor racing, the current wheels being a 1971 Ford Escort, as he continues an indulgence which goes back even longer than the mower shop.

“It’s my 61st year,” he says.

He’s also serviced a few machines for lawnmower-racing enthusiasts, but, unlike the Prime Minister this year at Field Days, he hasn’t raced one.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.