Public Places
surfaces, are not much good to anyone, apart from those lucky few that are able to actually get inside them”
artificial sports
“Steel fences, three metres high around
difficult to mow anyway and will never be used for organised sport, but they could provide a home for an entire community of insects and wildflowers. Children need to feel what it’s like to kick through the slender seed heads of a sward of fescue in June. Maybe they’ll spot their first grass snake in there, or catch grasshoppers in September. Later in life, perhaps they’ll develop their relationship with the girl from the estate one warm July evening. Drain trench arisings can be very useful
for creating mini-landscapes that can be adventure playgrounds for kids. You’ll save money also by not having to cart it away and, whilst this material isn’t good for growing good quality sports turf, trees do very well in it and a reasonable grass cover can always be created. Maybe try a wildflower mix, or create a dense shrubbery, fantastic for hide and seek. Oh, and birds will like to fly into it and nest too.
Whilst on the subject of drainage, have a look at your outfall. A pipe can go straight into a ditch of course. Since you’ll have excavators on site, however, why not scoop out a little of the ground before the ditch and discharge your drainage into this. A nice big connection to the ditch will make sure the scoop
“Children need to feel what it's like to kick through the slender seed heads of a sward of fescue in June”
92 PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013
never fills with water, though it will be wet a lot of the time in there. This, again, creates another good and safe environment for kids to discover and play in. They’ll get really muddy. It will also establish a totally different community of wetland species of plant and animal. That’s called biodiversity; that’s good, that is.
These are some of the things you can do with public open spaces whilst you are establishing formal natural turf sports pitches on them. By using a little imagination and broadening one’s perception of what these spaces are meant to do, it is possible to enhance the life experience of many more people than just the ones involved with organised sport. At the same time, you are making participation in organised sport a more attractive proposition by actually bringing it closer to, and integrating it with, the wider community.
This is all natural turf stuff of course. Steel fences, three metres high around artificial sports surfaces, are not much good to anyone, apart from those lucky few that are able to actually get inside them. Take your jumper off. There’s a ball
here. Do you fancy a kick around? Website:
www.agrostis.co.uk
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