A garden tractor has the frame and transmission to do ground engaging work with a rear lift hitch of some type(either sleeve hitch for catagory 0 three point hitch). This includes rototillers, one bottom mold board dirt plow, disc harrow, chisel plow/ground ripper and so forth. A lawn tractor cannot handle this type of stress. Lawn tractors mow your grass pull a lawn cart and with care, push or blow snow. Some of the higher end lawn tractors can just barely handle a lawn roller but most will just overheat and burn up the cheap hydrostatic transmissions they use these days. Those lack enough capacity of fluid to stay cool under a load, such as pulling a heavy lawn roller. Many older garden tractors, and a couple current ones like the Cub Cadet XT3 are shaft driven between the engine and transmission instead of a belt, and use a horizontal crankshaft engine(like a big tractor) instead of a vertical crankshaft engine(like a push mower). Mike