The Garden Groom does a good job of trimming shrubs, with an attached bag that collects most of the clippings as you work.

The Providence Journal / Laura Meade Kirk

Imagine a hedge trimmer that cleans up the trimmings for you.

It’s here, and its name is Garden Groom.

It’s a new-fangled rotary hedge trimmer that’s specially designed with a fan to blow the trimmings into a plastic collection bin — or a bag for bigger jobs — as you trim.

We tried it out, and it actually works pretty much as advertised. It doesn’t collect 100 percent of the trimmings, but it certainly collects most them — which greatly reduces the amount of time you’ll have to spend cleaning up after trimming the hedges.

That was the goal of a retired engineer in England, who introduced the Garden Groom four years ago in his quest to find a better, safer and less time-consuming way to trim his hedges, according to Christine Pesola, a company spokeswoman.

It was initially sold on line and through “infomercials” on television, but it’s now available at Home Depot stores as well, Pesola said..

There are two versions of the Garden Groom, midi and pro. . We tried the Garden Groom Midi, which is the version available locally at Home Depot stores for $149, Pesola said. (The “pro” version is slightly larger and more powerful and is available online only.)

Conveniently, it came assembled and ready to use, with the small plastic collection bin attached. All we had to do was plug it in and start trimming.

It’s lightweight and easy to use and mulches the trimmings into tiny pieces that go into a collection bin attached to the unit, but the small collection bin quickly filled — and needed to be emptied repeatedly –– during a trimming of an oversize burning bush. The bag attachment collected much more, but was more unwieldy when maneuvering the device. The unit also quickly became clogged with the lightweight leaves of the burning bush. But it worked much better when it came to trimming the light growth of evergreen bushes, which is what it’s designed for, with less scatter of the trimmings too.

The Garden Groom’s rotary blade makes it easy to sculpt the bushes, whether carving out a straight line across the tops of the hedges or rounding off the burning bushes, noted one user, Chet Milosh of North Attleboro. But it also requires two hands to use and doesn’t have the “reach” of a tradition hedge trimmer, so it’s not as easy to cut the tops of hedges that are tall or wide and tough to reach.

It definitely cut down on the cleanup time afterward, although there were still about 10 percent of the trimmings on the ground when we were done. And it was tougher to rake the mulched leaf clippings than it was to rake out the full-sized leaves left behind by the regular hedge trimmer.

Milosh, who’d bought a “pro” version online through Hammacher Schlemmer, one of his favorite gardening Web sites, said he’s thrilled with its performance. A local landscaper had given him a quote of $400 for a one-time trim of the bushes around his house, so he’d opted to spend $200 on the Garden Groom instead.

He loved the fact that it mulched and collected virtually all of the trimmings, and the rotary design helped him sculpt his bushes better than a traditional hedge trimmer. In fact, he said, “I found that the trimmer clipped my bushes quicker and better than any other trimmer I’ve ever used.”

The Garden Groom midi is sold at Home Depot and by phone at 1-800-492-1645. You can also check the company’s Web site at www.gardengroom.com.

lkirk@projo.com