Public Places


The club’s four croquet lawns are amongst their most important assets


3.5mm-4mm in the winter. The mowers are fitted with brushes to help stand the grass up. Turf irons are also used twice a week to help firm up the greens. John rejoins us to explain that the club has now embraced a detailed performance strategy for monitoring the condition of all the playing surfaces around the site. The golf greens, specifically, have weekly checks on their performance, testing for hardness (firmness), smoothness (ball roll), speed, moisture content and soil temperature.


Presentation of the gardens is designed to create a relaxing environment across the whole site


Stimpmetre readings are averaging between 10 and 13 feet depending on the time of the year and competition calendar. Tees are kept at 7mm, cutting three times a week during the summer, and raised to between 9-10mm for winter. Fairways are generally kept at 12mm for most of the year, however, if worm casts become a problem, then it is raised to around 14mm. Whilst walking around, I observed vases of flowers on the ladies’ first and ninth tees, a new initiative brought in by John for special events which is very


popular with the lady members. The rough is maintained at between 50mm-60mm, whilst the four hectares of native rough is kept at a height between 200mm-300mm and scarified three times a year in February, July and October. The club has installed a fully automated irrigation system for greens, fairways, approaches and some areas of the rough, along with some landscape plant misters used in the bunker faces. The club has also invested in irrigation for all of the gardens, hedges, croquet lawns and grass tennis courts. The system is mains fed and topped up with


DECEMBER/JANUARY 2014 PC 79


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