the summer,


when they all play in the county club team knock out competition. The course is 6,456 yards long, situated on old parkland that used to be part of a larger private estate. The topsoil is humus rich overlying a heavy clay. The greens are built on pushed up local soils supporting a healthy sward of Poa annua containing less than 5% colonial bents. The Poa is a mainly long established reptans type. The fairways and roughs are also dominated by Poa annua but contain more of the, freely seeding, true annual type Meadow Grass. The course has many old stands


of


oak and beech with magnificent


individual specimens that also include walnut and chestnut, many with TPOs (tree preservation orders). The Course Manager has twenty years experience as a greenkeeper working at parkland clubs in the county, with the last five years spent at Meadowland Park. As the club is well established, and doing well financially, he has good machinery and staff resources operating an annual budget of £350,000 including wages. He is


doing a good job, “knows his Poa”, but has problems with disease in the autumn and winter, and compaction in the rootzones causing root break. The Greens Chairman, and what appears to be an older section of the club, play a fair bit of golf on the coast in the summer and think that the greens at Meadowland should be more like the ‘links’ greens. They have read a fair bit about ‘sustainable’ turf for golf greens and want to explore the possibilities of species conversion so that they have links style greens that are more cost effective to maintain. So, what are you going to advise them is the best route for a stable future? Of course, that is a rhetorical question but it might give you some time for quiet reflection while in the depths of winter. Firstly though, notice that I used the word ‘stable’ in relation to future, and not sustainable.


Besides being fed up with the over used ‘S’ word, I am using the word stable, as I believe that stability, particularly in financial terms, is far more important than the sustainability that many consultants are pushing.


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