BIGGA members’ opportunity to shape education launches

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BIGGA members’ opportunity to shape education launches: The British & International Golf Greenkeepers Association has launched the Members’ Choice survey for 2021.

The survey offers BIGGA members the opportunity to shape the education that is on offer at the Continue to Learn 2021 education programme, which is due to return in January as part of the BIGGA Turf Management Exhibition.

BIGGA members’ opportunity to shape education launches

BIGGA members’ opportunity to shape education launches

The link to the Members’ Choice survey will be sent to all greenkeeper members of BIGGA. Prospective topics have been gathered through BIGGA’s annual ‘Proposal to Present’ system, where individuals and companies can submit their ideas for future programmes.

The Members’ Choice survey distinguishes the job role of the respondent, thus enabling BIGGA to create programmes suited to their members, wherever they may be on their career journey.

Continue to Learn at BTME is the most comprehensive education programme for greenkeeping professionals outside of the USA and attracts in excess of 3,000 attendees each year.

Sami Strutt, BIGGA’s head of member development, said: “In these strange times we are living in, it is all the more important to focus on the future. Planning for Continue to Learn at BTME 2021 is in full force, but needs the help of our members to shape the programme content. We want the learning to be relevant and to further enhance the knowledge and professionalism that is demanded by greenkeepers and we can only do this by asking our members what they want to see from the Continue to Learn offering.”

Continue to Learn at BTME 2021 will take place at Harrogate Convention Centre from Sunday 17 to Wednesday 20 January 2021, running alongside BTME, which runs from Tuesday 19 to Thursday 21 January 2021.

The Members’ Choice survey is available to complete online here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MCC2L2021

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Praise for JCB food initiative

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Praise for JCB food initiative: The leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council today paid tribute to JCB for helping make a “real difference” to the lives of vulnerable people with its special food aid initiative.

Councillor Abi Brown’s comments came as JCB increases its production of meals for the community and works with more local organisations to extend its delivery of the food to the most disadvantaged adults and children.

Praise for JCB food initiative

Praise for JCB food initiative

The company’s catering staff in the UK and India are preparing more than 37,500 meals a week for distribution around towns and villages located close to its plants. The initiative is the idea of Lady Bamford, wife of JCB Chairman Lord Bamford. In the UK, staff started producing 2,000 cottage pies a week for distribution in the North Staffordshire area – and have now boosted production to 2,600.

The first meals have now been delivered to the city council with around 1,000 JCB meals a week expected for distribution to vulnerable adults and children across the city, who have asked for help during the Coronavirus pandemic through the #StokeonTrent Together initiative.

Today Councillor Abi Brown, Leader of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, said: “People, businesses and individuals across the city have stood up and been counted in these testing times. JCB is one such organisation that we are proud to have as a business supporting Stoke-on-Trent. We are grateful to have a business of such calibre supporting the city where hundreds of its employees live and know it will make a huge difference to our most vulnerable residents that we are supporting through our #StokeonTrentTogether initiative. Our heartfelt thanks go to JCB.”
JCB’s kitchens in Staffordshire are being supported with the provision of food from organic farms at Daylesford in Gloucestershire. So far, Daylesford – founded by Lady Bamford – has supplied more than half a tonne of organic beef mince to the project, with staff working seven days a week to support the food aid initiative.

The meals being prepared by JCB arrive in specially prepared containers with a message, which reads: “Lovingly prepared by JCB’s chefs for our local community.”
The scale of the operation in India is even bigger, where the Coronavirus has caused huge disruption to people’s lives. Forty-five JCB staff have been mobilised to cook more than 35,000 meals a week in the company canteens for communities around JCB’s factory locations in Delhi, Pune and Jaipur.

In the UK, JCB is also working with the The Hubb Foundation in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, to distribute food to children and families in need of support across the city and the first of the cottage pies were delivered last week.

Staffordshire Civil Contingencies Unit puts measures in place to support the people of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent in an emergency. One of the partners in this, Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service, has been helping JCB co-ordinate the distribution of the food, ensuring meals reach front line theatre staff at the Royal Stoke Hospital and providing the link to the city council to extend distribution to more parts of Stoke-on-Trent.

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EVO 165D delivers powerful performance

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EVO 165D delivers powerful performance: An EVO 165D from GreenMech has become the dominant machine on the arb fleet of Swansea-based Rooted Tree & Landscapes.

Owner Craig Mylan has been a loyal user of GreenMech woodchippers since he started the company in 2008 with the EVO becoming his fourth machine, and it’s the most powerful yet – transforming the way they carry out both commercial and domestic tree works.

EVO 165D delivers powerful performance

EVO 165D delivers powerful performance

“I first saw the EVO 165 at its launch at the 2019 Arb Show and the first thing that really hit me, or didn’t hit me more to the point, was the noise! We have a duty to our customers and our operators to look at things like reducing noise and this machine demonstrates real progress” explains Craig who heads up a team of six. “There are so many new developments on this machine – simple things like the foldable chute which makes storage of the unit that much easier.”

From a performance perspective, the re-designed flywheel and large infeed chute have resulted in labour and time savings when it comes to processing large volumes of woody waste. “The more powerful pull-through means we can feed in material without having to sned it down first. It then chips whatever we feed in quickly and efficiently before throwing it out again cleanly. It is without doubt the most powerful machine we’ve used in terms of torque and bite.” With its 165mm chipping capacity, the EVO isn’t the largest machine in Craig’s fleet, however it has been used on a range of projects both large and small.

Another factor that has kept Craig loyal is the superior back up support he’s received from those in the GreenMech dealer network. “I’ve worked closely alongside Julian Cullis of GreenMech since way back when, who has always kept me abreast of new and future developments. We’re also fortunate to have Chipper Hire South West not too far away who have a fantastic fleet of GreenMech machines to hire if we need them. With the EVO, the support we received from our local dealer Powercut in Carmarthen has again been first-class.”

“For us independent companies” Craig concludes, “our success depends on reliable and robust equipment that’s capable and working to its full capacity. The fact that the new EVO is a great machine is one thing, but the whole GreenMech ethos to support their users every step of the way is another to really be applauded.”

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Fields in Trust bringing parks to you

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Fields in Trust bringing parks to you: Whilst we’re all staying home and less able to get out to enjoy our nation’s parks this spring, green space charity Fields in Trust are bringing parks to people with a virtual tour of the UK, discovering beautiful parks and green spaces which are much loved and valued by their communities along the way.

At a time when communities across the country are revaluing the benefits their local parks usually provide for sport, nature and play, the tour will be moving around the UK exploring locations online by showcasing town and city parks which you can “visit” from your home and get a little virtual wellbeing boost in these challenging times. It’s an opportunity to experience, not just the local green spaces on your doorstep, but to discover new parks across the nations and regions of the UK.

Fields in Trust bringing parks to you

Fields in Trust bringing parks to you

The Fields in Trust website at www.fieldsintrust.org is the start point of the tour which begins by exploring the locations of the Home Nation winners in 2019’s UK’s Best Park award, Blackpool, Antrim, Dunfermline and Merthyr Tydfil. After that, the direction of the tour will be determined by park users who are invited to share their green space stories and suggest new areas to investigate. Whether you think your town or city has great parks that the rest of the country should know about, or perhaps you’re a Park-Friends-Group group or a community organisation who’d like to tell their story, let Fields in Trust know where the tour should visit and why!

Along the way, Fields in Trust will be finding out a bit more about how our usage of parks has been affected at this time with, a short survey of park users on the website www.fieldsintrust.org.

Research conducted by Fields in Trust has demonstrated clear physical health and mental wellbeing benefits from regular use of the UK’s parks and green spaces, yet these vital community assets are not equally distributed. Around 2.6million people in Great Britain live more than a ten-minute walk from their nearest park and are missing out on the physical health and mental wellbeing benefits as well as opportunities to connect with their neighbours.

Fields in Trust Chief Executive, Helen Griffiths, said: “The last few weeks have reminded everyone that the UK’s parks and green spaces are highly valued parts of our local neighbourhoods and shown us just how sorely they’re missed when they are not easily accessible. During these changed and challenging times, we must adapt how we use and enjoy them, in line with Government guidance. We are all experiencing what life would be like without access to these much-loved local spaces. Thankfully right now the loss is temporary, but it serves as a reminder that many of these spaces are lost forever. We hope that bringing the park to you this spring will provide a little virtual wellbeing because green spaces are good, they do good and they need to be protected for good.”

The average amount of green space per person in Great Britain is just over 35 square metres, less than half the size of a six-yard box on a football pitch; however, only 5.7% of the park and green space provision in Great Britain is legally protected with Fields in Trust. It is up to all of us to act to stem the decline and disappearance of our nation’s cherished parks and green spaces. Fields in

Trust are calling for the current level of park and green space provision to be maintained and encouraging communities to fight for those green spaces vulnerable to loss or development.

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Hayter Harrier’s 50th anniversary

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Hayter Harrier’s 50th anniversary: The Harrier range, manufactured by Hayter, the makers of the finest mowers, is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2020.

The ever-impressive range of rear-roller lawnmowers have set the benchmark for this class of mowers since its original model in 1970. The Harrier has won various accolades through the years, including the prestigious BAGMA award, which in 1998 the Harrier was awarded the ‘Product of the Decade’ title, after a nationwide dealership vote.

Hayter Harrier's 50th anniversary

Hayter Harrier’s 50th anniversary

In 1960, the Hayter company received one of the country’s greatest accolades, when they were granted the Royal Warrant for the supply of machinery to HM Queen Elizabeth II – which is an honour that is still retained, 60 years later.

The Harrier range has always been synonymous with luxury and a premium mowing experience; being one of the first rotary-bladed lawnmowers to feature an integrated heavy rear-roller and enabling the user to achieve the quintessential British, striped finish in their gardens.

Craig Hoare, Sales and Marketing Manager at Hayter, said: “We are really excited to be celebrating 50 years of the Harrier. This machine has been a staple of British gardening ever since its initial release in 1970, and even today, it has proved to be more popular than ever.”

“As we look to the future of the Harrier, this year we have released a series of updates to the range, including new blades, improved engines and our patented Crank-Safe Blade Brake Clutch (BBC) system on some of the Harrier models. We are continuing to take a pro-active approach to our products, and these updates to the Harrier mowers demonstrate just that.”

In recent years, the new additions to the Harrier range have seen continued success. The Harrier 48 and 56 continue to provide high-quality and high-performance mowing to people’s gardens all over the country. The Harrier Pro models also offer two-piece steel rear rollers to those using the mowers in a professional capacity.

For more information, please visit www.hayter.co.uk.

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