Grass Clippings
Around our grounds
Spring is coming, I assure you. Even though it doesn’t feel like it at the moment we are now at the end of snowdrop season and daffodils and bluebells are already in bloom – a clear indication we are over the worst of the cold weather.
Soon, soil temperatures will start to creep up and the grass plant will break dormancy and start to grow. This year more than ever, we need to get the turf to start to leap out the ground.
It’s been a truly awful winter and after talking to many of the Course Managers in the area over the last few weeks, everyone is wanting the cycle of atrocious conditions to slip away so they can get on with presenting the courses for spring.
From frozen ground we have now moved back to wet conditions hampering any real chance of getting turf machines out to prep the course. Driving on the course with any vehicle in these conditions will cause considerable compaction affecting course conditions later.
March can be a frustrating month, either too wet or too cold and dry which makes the preparation for the Centenary Putter and the Gold Cup weekend difficult to get ready for as these will be little or no growth limiting the amount of presentation cutting that can be done before hand. Nine years’ experience at the Club has shown me that the grass doesn’t really wake up in these parts until April. But fortune favours the prepared, so onwards we are planning for spring and summer and doing incremental works on the course as we can.
Golf Environment Organisation
We are currently in the final stages of gaining accreditation to the Golf Environment Organisation (GEO). It has been a long-term goal to obtain certification to the GEO to recognize the efforts made over the last few years to manage the estate in an environmentally responsible framework. The GEO is an international not-for-profit foundation, founded sixteen years ago to help inspire, support, and reward golf and sport facilities that are keen to promote the social and environmental values of sport. The process of certification is an in-depth process of suppling evidence and data to the GEO to show that the Club has a genuine structured approach towards the aim of sustainability.
The last stage of the process is a visit from one of the accreditation team who walk the course and interview the management team (Course and Grounds) to gain a full understanding of the work that has been done in the past years to this cause. This will be completed in the next month, and we shall be made aware if our application will be approved by the end of April. Gaining accreditation is also an active process, we will be required to continue to show incremental gains to demonstrate that we are on a constant improvement schedule with regards to our environmental standing to remain in partnership with the GEO.
In conjunction with the work, we have been doing in the past few years, we will be arranging a course walk around the golf course to show those non-golfing Members the efforts we have been making to improve our environmental credentials. We shall be arranging this event in the springtime and will advertise the date through the Roehampton Club Recorder and Club notice boards. Hopefully we manage to choose a day when it’s not raining.
Grounded in gardening
From a survey of 1,000 UK residents, a majority of 62% of survey participants said they had a current interest in or enjoy gardening as a hobby, with one in five saying they are ‘very interested’ and are keen gardeners. While 18% said that while gardening wasn’t a current hobby of theirs, they might like to try it in the future. Regionally, northerners had some of the lowest gardening figures, with a third saying they had no interest in the hobby at all. On the contrary, those in the east have the highest combined interest (those who answered ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ interested in gardening), at 67%.
Where age is concerned, three-quarters of those over 65 expressed the strongest interest in gardening, but interest diminishes among lower age groups. 67% of respondents aged 55-64 said they were either ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ interested in the hobby, while only half of those aged between 35-54 said the same. However, interest picks up again in those aged 25-34, of whom 62% expressed interest in gardening. And when it comes to starting a new hobby in gardening, a quarter of respondents aged 35-44 expressed the strongest interest across all age groups.
Between men and women, women expressed a stronger interest in gardening, with 28% saying they were ‘very’ interested over a lesser 17% of men.
Some 28% of survey participants said that they ‘very often’ spend time amongst nature, while 30% said that it was ‘quite often’ that they would do so. On the lower end, 15% of survey participants said they rarely or never spend time outdoors. How do they ever get any vitamin D I wonder? Regionally, 41% of Welsh residents boast the largest portion of those saying they would ‘very often’ spend time amongst nature, while one in five northern residents represent the region with the largest percentage who say they rarely or never spend time outdoors.