To make the cut with savvy consumers, today's lawn mowers are packed with features. They have to be. Robo vacuum cleaners are getting to be mainstream these days. Driverless cars are in the news. Customers -- and their phones -- are very smart, and they expect their lawnmowers to be on top of things, too.

"Consumers' expectations are that the products and services they want can be customized to suit their needs," says Wade Tollison, senior marketing manager for walk-behind mowers at Toro. Today's high-performance grass-cutting machines rely as much on sophisticated technology as on raw horsepower. They're easier to use and maintain than ever before. Gasoline mowers still dominate the market, but battery-powered electric mowers are charging into the future.

Consumers shopping for lawn mowers have an astonishing number of choices. Easy-to-start, self-propelled gas mowers are the most popular models, but battery-powered mowers, with zero emissions, already represent 15 percent of all mower sales, says Paul Hope, who tests mowers and writes about the results for Consumer Reports. The top-rated battery-powered mowers do not compromise quality or performance. These mowers "have gotten really good," Hope says. "We are now starting to see electric models that perform as well as gas."

Nevertheless, "the industry is a little bit in flux right now," Hope says. Gas mowers run indefinitely, as long as you have a can of gas, while battery-powered mowers have a finite range: They may need a charge, which means you have to stop mowing, before you finish a large yard. Electric mowers also cost more than gas mowers.

Lawn tractors and zero-turn mowers, both popular with consumers who have an acre or more to mow, cut the grass on large properties uniformly, quickly and safely, say Mark Waldvogel and Jamie Palmer, product managers at John Deere. These big mowers are comfortable to ride, and they are designed to chop grass clippings quite fine, which is good for the lawn.

Most people with large properties do not bag their clippings, but they're not happy when the grass clumps under the deck in mulching mode or forms big windrows when the grass is being discharged out the side. New lawn tractors and zero-turn mowers have deep decks and are more efficient mulchers than the previous generation of mowers, Waldvogel says. Switching between the mulch and side discharging functions used to require several steps, but new machines can be switched easily from one mode to the other -- so you can mulch the grass close to the house, or blow clippings out the side of the mower elsewhere.

Although cutting grass is just a chore to many homeowners, others really like to mow, Waldvogel says, and comfortable, easy-to-operate lawn tractors are part of the reason. Zero-turn mower customers want maneuverability and speed, so they can cut the grass and get on with their Saturday.

Several electric lawn tractors and zero-turn mowers are already available. Ryobi and Cub Cadet make them, and both have earned good reviews from Consumer Reports, in spite of some limitations. Mean Green Products, in Hamilton, Ohio, makes a heavy-duty, battery-powered zero-turn mower called the Nemesis that can mow three to five acres on a charge. It's almost as big as a commercial lawn mower. It is also a luxury purchase ($9,000 for the basic model). "If you own a Tesla, drive a hybrid car or have solar panels on your roof, you are a candidate for our mower," says Joe Conrad, founder and president of Mean Green Mowers. The company even makes a mower canopy with built-in solar panels to recharge the batteries.

Regardless of the source of power, the dominant trend among all mowers is toward consumer-friendly features. One of the latest walk-behind models by Toro includes power reverse, "an exciting, unmet need," Tollison says, that eliminates tugging a heavy lawn mower backward repeatedly when mowing around trees. The company's PoweReverse mower's handle has shock absorbers, to reduce hand fatigue. With the flip of a switch, you can change from bagging the clippings to side discharge. Push-button starting is a standard feature on some Toro mowers, eliminating the annoyance of a pull cord. Several new Toro mowers can be folded up and stored upright, without leaking oil or gas. "We live in clutter nation," Tollison says. "This mower needs 70 percent less storage space."

And how about robotic mowers that cut the grass all by themselves? Last year, Honda introduced its robo Miimo mower, designed for tech-savvy consumers. It's a hot product that commands a premium price ($2,500 to $2,700). At present, this mower works only on very short turf types, those kept between one and 2 1/2 inches high, so it's not for everyone. It can be programmed to mow an entire lawn, steer around trees or just trim the edges around flower beds. When it's finished working, it returns automatically to its charging station, while you sip lemonade on the patio.

Honda also makes a dozen different self-propelled and push-type walk-behind gas-powered mowers, including electric-start mowers with cruise control, and mowers with sophisticated bagging systems that allow homeowners to mulch and bag at the same time, ergonomic handlebars and an exclusive twin-blade mowing system.

So what's next? Hope, at Consumer Reports, predicts more choices in every category, a continued emphasis on convenience, and a narrowing gap between the performance and prices of gas and electric mowers. Depending on your yard and your preferences, "there is a case to be made for keeping the old mower a few years, while electrics get even better," Hope says. "But if you are ready to embrace electric and pay a little more for it, it's here."

SOURCES

-- To compare the features of lawnmowers, check manufacturers' web sites: toro.com, deere.com, powerequipment.honda.com, and others. For electric mowers, see especially egopowerplus.com, ryobitools.com and meangreenproducts.com.

-- Consumer Reports takes a close look at new lawn mowers every year, testing them in Florida during the winter and publishing the results in the magazine every summer. This year, the CR lawn mower overview and results will be in the magazine's June issue. An overview of mowers and recent recommendations is also available on the Consumer Reports website, consumerreports.org.

A surprising number of the common flowers in our gardens are exotic imports. Increasing the proportion of native plants will put your garden at the forefront of a modern movement.

Growing interest in naturalistic gardens, with their rich interplay of color and texture, has boosted awareness of the beauty and importance of native plants in both the design and ecology of gardens. You don't have to plant exclusively natives to capture the look, but native plants are an obvious choice. They evolved to thrive in the various local conditions around the country, so they're easier to take care of than beautiful but marginally hardy or finicky exotics. Native plants support pollinators, provide habitat for birds and bugs, and require fewer resources to maintain than most non-natives. Make room for natives among traditional favorite flowers, and you will be delighted by the life they bring to your garden.

The easiest way to get native plants into your garden is to fill any empty spot with them. You don't have to get rid of your big mop-head hydrangeas, peonies or other hardy non-natives -- just allow native plants to share space with them. Native flowers such as butterfly milkweed, coneflowers, penstemon and phlox, among others, look great and thrive planted side-by-side with existing perennials and shrubs in flower beds. They are also good for the environment.

"These are all solid native plants that provide benefits for nature," says Peggy Anne Montgomery, a spokeswoman for American Beauties Native Plants. American Beauties is a branding program that works with growers to help increase the availability and diversity of native plants in garden shops. "We finally have the wind in our sails, and it's because of the whole thing with bees," Montgomery says.

Not so many years ago, all insects were considered pests. Gardeners wanted to limit them, control them or eradicate them. Now gardeners are encouraging pollinators -- and bees are among the most important of these -- with native plants that provide nectar and shelter through the seasons. Gardens with native plants support an astonishing variety of good bugs, says Neil Diboll, owner of Prairie Nursery in Westfield, Wisconsin. Good bugs help keep the population of bad bugs in check, limiting pest problems among ornamental and edible plants. Instead of reaching for pesticides, "now we're planting preservation gardens," says Diboll, who, for almost 40 years, has been a champion of native plants.

Native plants are appropriate in gardens of every size and style, in urban, suburban and rural settings. They're pretty in pots on patios and look terrific in balcony and rooftop gardens. Native plants are the refreshingly stylish and modern element in municipal flowerbeds, offering a drive-by lesson in grace and diversity. At botanic gardens and nature centers, displays of native plants give home gardeners a lot of new ideas to take home with them.

The appeal is broad. Professional garden designers and landscape architects are specifying native plants in their designs to enliven traditional landscapes with a fresh look. In corporate landscapes, plantings of natives instead of traditional swaths of identical annual flowers look modern and up to date and show that businesses are good ecological stewards, because natives naturally do not require insecticides, herbicides or pesticides to thrive.

The selection of native plants at garden shops has grown, but natives themselves are really nothing new. "Most of our plants are from the mid-Pleistocene," Diboll says. So-called "new natives" are actually what the professionals call nativars, combining the words native and cultivar (or cultivated variety). These are native plants that have been selected for larger flowers, for example, or a longer bloom period. Nativars may be more compact than the original natives from which they are derived, or they might be hardier, or have more spectacular fall color. They represent what some professionals consider the best of both natives and hybrids.

Nativars are controversial because they're usually propagated by cuttings or divisions, so they don't pass along the genetic diversity of a truly native seed-grown population. Diboll offers only native species grown from open-pollinated seed. American Beauties includes nativars in its selections, but the company evaluates these choices carefully, Montgomery says, and labels them appropriately. In her own garden in Pennsylvania, natives, nativars and many non-native plants all grow happily together.

Even a few natives will make a difference in a garden. Jason Delaney, a garden designer in St. Louis, is a daffodil collector (daffodils are Old World plants) who recommends natives to clients and grows them at home, too. A diverse garden "attracts not only myriad beneficial insects, but also small birds and mammals," he says. "Even tiny urban gardens can successfully support an array of wildlife." Native plants help make them feel right at home.

SOURCES:

-- Prairie Nursery sells native seeds, plants, seed mixes and plans for native-plant gardens, including butterfly habitat gardens, rain gardens, gardens for songbirds, and more; prairienursery.com.

-- American Beauties Native Plants are available at garden centers and by mail through gardencrossings.com. The company's website includes resources for gardeners and garden designers, including detailed plant descriptions and garden plans; abnativeplants.com.

It's a good time to take a look at last year's gardening successes and failures, savoring the better accomplishments and trying to learn something useful from the not-so-good. It's time for a few New Year's gardening resolutions.

New Year's resolutions are often intimidating or even a little depressing -- and the fact is, most of them are scrapped before the end of January. But gardening resolutions are low-pressure pledges. "I see them more as goals, or even like a dream," says Karen Beaty, a horticulturist at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas. Beaty is in charge of the Wildflower Center's 4.5-acre family garden. At the end of the gardening season, "I think of what we did and what we can do better next year," she says. On those terms, resolutions aren't burdensome: They're full of promise, just like a package of seeds.

This year, Beaty has pledged to document the development of the garden more thoroughly. She's not thinking in terms of spreadsheets: She plans to take pictures of flower beds, making a record of the garden's growth through the seasons, highlighting plant combinations. She's going to photograph the installation of an underground irrigation system, so it doesn't get dug up later by mistake. She plans to take pictures from her favorite vantage points in the garden, and even to photograph things she doesn't like. "That way I can see what I want to do more of, and what I don't want to do more of," she says.

Beaty has also vowed to be more ruthless in her pruning practices this year. Pruning stimulates growth, after all, and she regrets not having trimmed long-blooming perennials in midsummer, to encourage them to continue producing flowers well into the fall. "I'm trying to coach myself to not be afraid to prune like that," she says. Salvia, bee balm, helianthus, coreopsis, purple coneflower and black-eyed Susans will all produce an extra flush of blooms if they're cut back in early summer. Of course, annual flowers, such as zinnias, cosmos and marigolds, also keep blooming heavily all summer long if you cut off the flowers as they fade.

Heather Sherwood, a horticulturist at the Chicago Botanic Garden, is concentrating on beneficial insects and pollinators in her gardening resolutions for 2018. In fact, she got started on this resolution in late fall, blowing autumn leaves off the lawn and into shrub and flower beds, where they serve as mulch, create a rich habitat for beneficial insects and, over time, decompose to add nutrients and micronutrients to the soil. "People used to think this was bad," Sherwood says, "but now we realize that good insects are in those leaves." Turning autumn leaves into a resource for the garden saves time that would otherwise be spent bagging the leaves and getting rid of them. It also saves money because she doesn't have to purchase mulch for the flower beds.

To make more pollinators feel welcome in the garden, Sherwood plans to install bee houses made with short lengths of bamboo, bundled together. Hang these bee houses from tree branches, and mason bees will find them. Sherwood protects pollinators at home, too: She keeps bees on the flat roof of her garage, where she harvested 50 jars of honey last year. "Bees are so cool," she says.

Taking care of pollinators is good for the health of food gardens, too. Chris Smith, an enthusiastic home gardener and marketing manager for Sow True Seeds, a mail-order seed catalog company in Asheville, North Carolina, plans to grow more flowers in his vegetable garden this year. Flowers attract pollinators, which increase yields, Smith says. Planting flowers among vegetables also "looks great, and it breaks up the monoculture of a single bed," he says.

Smith plans to grow a border of sunflowers along one side of his backyard vegetable garden. He's also going to plant nasturtiums in with his squash, and he's making room for lots of marigolds, among other annual flowers.

Smith also vows that in 2018 he'll work harder to make the most of vegetables that can be harvested several ways. Instead of composting the tops of beets and carrots, he's planning to eat the greens. "I'm trying to tackle the problems of food waste and small-space gardening" by making the best use of everything he grows, he says. Turnip greens and radish tops are likewise edible. The leaves of some beans, sweet potatoes and peas are also delicious. Smith really appreciates okra (he once grew 14 different kinds) and delights in recipes for the unexpected, such as okra pizza. He also eats the leaves.

Gardening resolutions are meant to be inspiring, not onerous, these professionals say. If your busy life gets in the way of your good intentions, just do the best you can. "If you don't achieve your resolution, don't beat yourself up," Beaty says. "If it's a good one, you can recycle it. There's always next year."