Essential lawn maintenance work has been completed at the club in the past week in preparation for the 2025 season.
The hollow tining of all five lawns was completed a couple of weeks ago after being delayed by the wet weather that also forced the closure of the lawns for play.
Tining – also known as turf aeration – is the process that removes small plugs of turf in order to improve the health of the grass. The process relieves compaction of soil, thus enabling water and nutrients to reach grass roots. This year, both the tining and removal of turf plugs was carried out by an outside contractor.
On Thursday, the club’s 4,000 square metres of lawn received a top dressing of blended sand and soil topdressing, the first stage in a long-term project to improve drainage on our lawns.
Club President John Steel – who organised the lawn treatments – told me that it’s been proposed that sand and topdressing will be applied over the next few years in order to improve the drainage on the lawns, which are sitting on dense clay.
Although other ways of improving drainage are being investigated, most methods are prohibitively expensive for the club.
On Thursday, John Carrington helped move 2.5 tons of dressing and topsoil from the club’s entrance to the lawns and then helped contractors from Lush Lawn Care to load the spreader used to carry out the work.
The lawns also received a covering of slow-release fertiliser once the sand and topsoil had been laid.
In all, the tining, dressing and fertilising has cost around £400 for each lawn – a total of £2,000 for this work alone.
Earlier in the year, the lawns also received weed treatment which had to be carried out by a professional contractor.
The club is fortunate that much of our lawn maintenance is voluntarily carried out by club members, enabling club Treasurer Stuart Smith to keep member annual fees low.
Thanks to John Steel and Jon Carrington for their input into this essential maintenance work.
Paul Felton