Grass Clippings

Around our grounds

It’s been another blissfully sunny week for all in southwest London, with the temperatures at the weekend making a reasonable assimilation of the Mediterranean with a recorded high of 32 degrees last Sunday. The previous Tuesday’s showers which recorded a rainfall figure of 6mm were very welcome, as were the preceding weeks showers which totalled to 15mm of rain. If only all summers were so simple with dependable bouts of rain to keep all the grass going. Unfortunately, life just isn’t that simple, and I feel that our luck may run out of steam in July.

Already the rough has that mid-summer tinge to starting to dry out and the tell-tell seed heads are popping up. When grass starts to sense that water reserves aren’t adequate, they will shoot up flowering heads to throw off seeds into the neighbourhood as survival instinct. The plant may die but the next generation of plants is out there waiting to germinate.

The playing surfaces are in good order and reacting well, and as mentioned, the recent showers have done the fairways a power of good. The two irrigation lines in the middle of the fairway will help maintain the majority of the turf for the upcoming months as we go into the hot spell.

Having a chance to dig around and sample the fairway and rough in the last week, I can confirm that under the initial dampness in the organic mat at the surface, everything from one cm down is dust. There is not an iota of moisture in the ground now. Which, given six months ago we were wading through rivers of surplus run off, shows the remarkable ability of the site to veer from the one extreme to the other.

We are approaching the Wimbledon Championships, which is always a good sign that rain is due, and regardless of the inconvenience that can cause, it may be our saving grace.

The Club’s tree advisor, who monitors the health and aspects of safety for all arboriculture matters on the estate has been conducting his assessment of our tree stock over the last few weeks. Golf and tennis players may have noted a gentleman gazing skyward over the last few weeks and wondered ‘who is this chap?’ With over 2,500 trees individually itemized on the register and some 500 plus in plantation beds, there are quite a few trees to account for and process. Having spent some time with the advisor in the last week, I can confirm that my observations on how climate change is affecting our tree stock has also been corroborated by him. Due to the seasonal variance of hot summers followed by below-zero-degree winters, some species are going to find it very tough to endure in any numbers. Shallow-rooted trees such as birch, sorbus and prunus (flowering cherry and almond) come off worse. Their inability to lay down stores for the winter following drought conditions makes them susceptible to the cold winds and freezing conditions that followed this past winter. We have already had to remove a number of dead trees this season from fairway lines and plantations where there was the potential for damage from dead branches. We have begun diversifying the types of trees on the estate, planting varieties that can withstand heat and low temperature extremes as well as pests and diseases that were previously uncommon in recent times. In the short term, as well as the long term this is the best practice to support a golf course that has a rich tapestry of woodland for the future.

Glastonbury Festival

Pilton’s Worthy Farm in the West Country may not be iconic for most people under a certain age. It’s a dairy farm that has been in one family’s control for the last 150 years, with some 500 milking cows and about the same number of young stock. The girls produce around 16,000 litres of milk a day, with about half the milk going into bottled production and the rest for cheese and milk powder products for worldwide consumption. The estate has two farm managers to look after the daily working, John Taylor oversees the herd and milk production, while Steven Kearle runs the whole farm and takes care of the crops and feed management. That’s unusual for a farm of this size and that’s because the farm owner Mr Michael Eavis moonlights by day organising the Glastonbury Festival which has taken place on the Pilton site since 1970. The first headline band was the Kinks and admission was £1. Today, over 200,000 people attend, and millions of viewers watch headline bands perform at the event, but have you ever wondered what happens to the cows during the world-famous event?

Michael explains that the dry cows are transported away from the immediate festival site to fields in the vicinity, but they have to keep the milking cows in a series of barns to avoid any E. coli issues for the visitors. So, was Gertrude the cow being serenaded by Elton John last week? Post event, there is an army of volunteers, some of whom have been returning to the aftermath of the Glasto party for years, they have nicknamed themselves ‘The Wombles’, to help the operation of getting the farm back to normal.

Organisers urge people to take their rubbish and belongings with them when they leave – to ‘love the farm, leave no trace’. But still thousands of tonnes of rubbish remain after the festivalgoers depart – rubbish just ready to be tidied up. There are 400 people who clean up after the festival, with magnets to pick up any metal, and then the cows can be turned back out. A long time ago, it would have been a way worse situation after the festival goers had gone home. Single-use plastics were allowed, and the caterers sold everything in polystyrene but, over the years, the event has tried to educate the attendees and service vendors that the experience was to be more than turn up, tune in and drop out. After all it’s a farm for the rest of the year and not a music venue for 50 weeks of the year.

Over the past decade Michael and his family have incrementally improved the environmental credentials of the Glastonbury Festival to reflect the concerns of its patrons. Renewable energy has been a feature since 1979, it has used solar and wind power to heat the showers and uses generators that run on biodiesel sourced from hydrotreated vegetable oil. Michael also installed 1,500 square metres of solar panels on the roof of the cattle shed in 2010, making it one of the largest privately-owned solar photovoltaic systems in the country. The 1,300 plus panels save around 100 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year, generating 205,700kWh of energy – enough to supply 40 average households a year.

Food waste from the festival, as well as cow slurry, feed the new anaerobic digestion plant using to power backstage and production areas via a 125kVA generator for the event and keep the farms self-sustainable for the rest of the year. Michael discusses the farm workings with his two managers each and every day, ‘I’m a farmer first and foremost, and it felt like a tribute to my great grandfather when we won the NMR (National Milk Records) Gold Cup after five generations of milking. But I also go to gigs all the time and run competitions for bands at the Pilton working men’s club every couple of weeks – that’s my job’.

Royal Horticultural Society Shop

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is to open a houseplant shop at Bluewater Shopping Centre, Kent, in October 2023. This will be the organisation’s first foray into retail therapy of a green-fingered kind from a standalone premises, and not part of one of their portfolios of well-established exhibition gardens. The move creates as many questions as answers but given their knowledge of the market, it is hoped that this is a sound move. It follows on from a similar outlet created by Petersham Nurseries, with their branch created at Covent Garden, post Covid. This enterprise did however replicate the original Petersham business model of having food and beverage sales as part of the core offering to customers. RHS have indicated that the new store will have something for everyone, whether a complete novice or a green-fingered pro. Alongside houseplants, the RHS will sell lifestyle and homeware products and hold fortnightly events such as terrarium workshops and kokedama tutorials.

Bluewater is an out-of-town shopping centre in Stone, Kent and is set in a in a former chalk quarry. It took ten years to complete the building works, which occupies 240 acres (97 ha) and has a sales floor area of 154,000 m². The main building is a triangle of three malls: Thames Walk, Guildhall and Rose Gallery, with one anchor store at each corner.

Peter Bradburn, Course and Grounds Director