Grass Clippings
This is one of the busiest time times for the course and grounds department at the Club with a combination of renovation and event preparations during September and October filling the diary. The combination of a week’s worth of heavy rain and warm temperatures have created a perfect storm of grass growth at the moment. We have ceased the summer rain dances since the bounce back around the course has been tremendous.
The downside to the downpours, is that the tennis renovations, on the grass courts have stalled so not to cause damage to the courts. The change in the weather this week, gives us the opportunity to catch up with renovations to complete the aeration and then seed the courts before the ground temperatures start to reduce. In the gardens this week, the team are pruning the yew hedges in the sunken garden and contemplating, with good autumn sunshine all week, when exactly the leaves will begin to fall this year. Now there’s a task that every greenkeeper and grounds person wish they were on the other side of completing!
Queen Elizabeth II
Over the last week we have witnessed dramatic events in the history of our nation. The death of Queen Elizabeth II has been a shock to us all, one we inevitable anticipated but not completely. The Queen’s passion for the outdoors and the countryside was well known. Even has a young girl, the late Monarch had let it be known that she happiest in the countryside, with her horses and dogs than with people and city life. That love of nature and the land continued be part of her life to the end.
The Crown Estate, although held in the Monarch’s name is managed by a team of experienced property managers and its income is leased to the Treasury as an offset to the Sovereign Grant. Whereas the late Queen’s estates of Balmoral and Sandringham where privately managed properties run by land managers with the influence of Queen Elizabeth and her husband the Duke of Edinburgh during their lifetimes. The Duke was keen to endorse the need to create a sustainable view towards land management and influenced his son, King Charles III in environmental matters in agriculture.
The Duke planted thousands of trees through the decades across the royal estate and the late Queen inspired the creation of countless arboreta and planting of tens of thousands of trees in nations across the globe. The final flourish to these endeavours was the creation of the Queens Commonwealth Canopy for her Platinum Jubilee. Millions of trees have been pledged to be planted as part of this commitment to the environment by countries of the commonwealth and as a lasting epitaph to the late sovereign.
On a more domestic scale, the Queen had a passion in horticulture and gardening from an early age. Her first visit to the Chelsea Flower Show was with her parents in 1947 and she returned more than 50 times over the years to visit the gardens each spring and talk to the exhibitors, whom she had built ties with of decades. Gardening has been attributed to being a therapeutic hobby for the late Queen. A chance to be completely absorbed in a task (in the garden) on one’s own brought her greatest of joys.
Queen Elizabeth’s influence on gardening and horticulture has been immense, like a great number of the achievements over her lifetime, they are attributed to the phrase ‘soft power’. Influence through persuasion and cultural influence without friction. It will be the case I’m sure, that like her ancestors Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, both her and the Duke of Edinburgh’s legacy in horticulture will grow for centuries to come.