GA Groundcare appoint Matt Textor

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GA Groundcare appoint Matt Textor: Following the recent news of expansion in their coverage area, GreenMech main dealers GA Groundcare Ltd have announced the appointment of Matt Textor as Sales Manager.

A well-known industry name, Matt joins the Wiltshire dealership to spearhead sales of the GreenMech woodchipper range across their increased nine-county territory.

GA Groundcare appoint Matt Textor

GA Groundcare appoint Matt Textor

Having initially joined T H White Groundcare on a Service Engineering apprenticeship, Matt spent a total of 13 years in the workshop where he developed a thorough understanding of the mechanics behind a vast selection of groundcare and arboricultural equipment. This foundation went on to set Matt up for a successful 7 years in sales, pairing his technical know-how with an appreciation of the requirements of a wide customer base. During this time, he also headed up sales of the GreenMech range of pedestrian, road-tow, PTO and tracked woochippers from T H White’s Reading depot during their tenure as a dealer.

In his new position as Sales Manager for GA Groundcare Ltd, Matt will be in charge of business development across their new larger territory and is ideally placed to serve the South Eastern counties from his Berkshire location. On his appointment, Matt said, “I’m excited about the new challenge ahead and being able to target and focus all of my efforts solely on one fantastic product line. GreenMech are great ambassadors for British manufacturing and I am very much looking forward to working closely alongside them again, and the whole GA Groundcare Ltd team, to support customers old and new.”

Commenting on the exciting growth of GA Groundcare Ltd, Director Ashley Stevens added, “I’m very pleased to finally be able to get Matt on board, having worked alongside him a number of years ago. His mechanical knowledge and honest sales approach is a great fit for our business model.”

Operating from their purpose-built depot in Poulshot, Wiltshire, GA Groundcare Ltd are exclusive to the GreenMech franchise, offering supply, servicing and support, together with stocking a comprehensive range of GreenMech replacement parts. The success of the partnership saw an extension of GA Groundcare Ltd’s territory in January 2021 to serve the counties of Berkshire, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Somerset, Surrey, Sussex and Wiltshire.

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Get the mow how

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Get the mow how: Honda knows gardens are as important to our homes as any room in the house, more so than ever before. In a single day, the lawn is a running track for the dog, a football pitch for the kids and a dinner spot for the family. To withstand all this, we need to look after our lawn and gardens, and to do so successfully, we need to understand the significant role the weather plays.

To investigate and explore this intrinsic relationship between weather and gardening, Honda has teamed up with TV’s Broadcast Meteorologist, Laura Tobin, for the season ahead. A self-confessed weather fanatic, Laura’s career in meteorology started at the Met Office, before she moved to the RAF to provide mission-critical, aeronautical meteorology reports and briefings to flight crews. Since then, Laura has become one of the nation’s top weather forecasters, appearing regularly one some of the most-viewed national programmes hosted by leading broadcasters.

Get the mow how

Get the mow how

Over the course of the gardening season, Laura will feature in five episodes in which she will visit and speak to lawn and garden experts to uncover hints, tips and guidance that you can apply in your own garden, taking into account the influential effects of weather and climate change.  Along the way, we will also be bringing you some handy information on how our range of Honda mowers can help you keep your lawn in optimum condition.

Our first video sees Laura visit Tamsin Westhorpe in the stunning, frost-kissed Stockton Bury Gardens, Herefordshire. The pair talk about what to expect from the weather in the first month of spring and what your care routine for the “backbone” of your garden, the lawn, should be, starting with the season’s first cut; looking at when, why and how to perform it.

We look at the constantly evolving climate patterns that have and are continuing to change mowing habits in your garden for good. This all means you may be mowing earlier in the season and for longer – demanding a durable, reliable and high quality lanwmower, such as the izy-ON HRG 466 XB, to live up to the task ahead.

In the video, Tamsin shares her experience of using the Izy and how she’s found Honda’s all-electric, Cordless mower to be a revelation thanks its clean and quiet operation as well as it’s user-centric features such as the Versamow Variable, single-speed propulsion and Universal Battery system.

Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Ipp5kuA7U&t=1s

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EcoBunker enhances links feel at Golf Valley

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EcoBunker enhances links feel at Golf Valley: Built between 2007-8 by architect David Krause, Golf Valley is a major development, around 35km south of Munich.

Created by developer Michael Weichselgartner with the aim of hosting major tournaments and the Ryder Cup, Golf Valley was built in a links-style, with over 3,000 sq m (32,000 sq ft) of bunker sand area and, according to Andy Matzner, the club’s first course manager, who now works there in a consulting capacity, has always struggled with the impact of rain on its bunker faces.

EcoBunker enhances links feel at Golf Valley

EcoBunker enhances links feel at Golf Valley

“With such a massive area of sand, it was always a huge workload every time there was serious rain,” says Matzner. “In Bavaria, in the early summer, there are regular lightning storms, and every time there was a rain event, the whole greenkeeping crew would be occupied pushing sand back up the faces. And then the next day, it would happen again! I had real difficulty motivating my staff to keep shifting sand, and obviously the impact on our maintenance costs was huge.”

Matzner, by then consulting at Golf Valley, met Richard Allen, founder of synthetic bunker edging solution provider EcoBunker, in 2017. “By that time, I had realised that the bad weather, and the consequent washouts, were just something we had to deal with,” he says. “Golf Valley has no trees, and the course is quite links-like in look and feel, and it occurred to me that revetted walls, sensitively installed, would fit in nicely, and would give the place a more authentic links character. Richard visited and assessed the bunkers, and agreed with me that revetting would improve both their appearance and their performance, so we commissioned EcoBunker to install its product on an initial 200 sq m of bunkerfaces.”

That project, in spring 2018, was handled by EcoBunker construction manager Llewelyn Matthews. Covering thirteen bunkers, Matzner and the Golf Valley team were impressed by the results. “A revetted wall in sunlight and shadow looks very impressive,” he says. “But the most important thing was the prevention of washouts. A flat sandy bunker never washes out. It may fill up but so long as the drain operates effectively, the bunker will always work.”

In late 2019, Golf Valley was hit by a huge rain event. Almost every bunker, apart from the ones that had been rebuilt by EcoBunker, was virtually destroyed. The EcoBunkers survived the storm completely intact. At this point, owner Weichselgartner decided that as many as possible of the course’s bunkers should be rebuilt using the EcoBunker solution. The EcoBunker team came back on site in October 2020 to build the next set of bunkers. That project was substantially completed in December, and Matzner says the results are impressive. “The course looks much more like a real links now, and the bunkers perform far better,” he explains. “And that is all down to EcoBunker.”

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BIGGA announces Festival of Turf dates

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BIGGA announces Festival of Turf dates: The British & International Golf Greenkeepers Association has confirmed that its first Festival of Turf will take place this summer, with a new date intended to provide an improved experience for attendees and exhibitors.

The Festival of Turf is a two-day event that will take place in the predominantly outdoor setting of the Warwickshire Event Centre and will bring together golf greenkeepers, groundsmen and many others for the first time since BTME 2020, over 18 months previously.

BIGGA announces Festival of Turf dates

BIGGA announces Festival of Turf dates

BIGGA had initially announced a June date for the Festival of Turf and was confident event could be hosted with COVID-safety measures in place. But with the Prime Minister recently announcing the Roadmap out of lockdown, BIGGA has explored the opportunity of rescheduling the Festival of Turf for later in the summer, when social distancing restrictions are anticipated to have been removed.

As such, BIGGA is delighted to reveal that the Festival of Turf will now take place on 21 & 22 July 2021.

The Festival of Turf will welcome BIGGA members and others in the turf industry to the 30-acre Warwickshire Event Centre, with a wide range of vendors and trade stalls and entertaining twists that bring to life the ‘festival’ element of the event.

COVID-safety measures will remain in place, such as enhanced cleaning regimes and hand sanitising, plus any other requirements as defined by government guidelines. However, limits on visitor numbers and social distancing measures will no longer be required.

BIGGA CEO Jim Croxton said: “The Roadmap out of lockdown announced by the Prime Minister provided incredibly welcome news for the country and the association’s members, not least because it provided a date for the reopening of golf courses in England and a potential return to normality for us all. It also presented an opportunity for BIGGA to host the Festival of Turf as the spectacular of sports and amenity turf maintenance that we had hoped for when we first announced this event last year.

“We entered into negotiations with the Warwickshire Event Centre and were delighted to come to an arrangement with regards new dates for the Festival of 21 & 22 July. On this date England is anticipated to be at Step 4 of the COVID-19 roadmap, which will see legal limits on social contact removed. Although the published roadmap only serves as a guideline and the timings are subject to change, everyone at BIGGA is excited about the opportunity to provide an improved exhibition experience for our attendees.

“We always intended the Festival of Turf to be an opportunity for BIGGA members and their colleagues in the turf industry to reunite after so long apart and I’m delighted that these new dates will allow even more people to attend what promises to be a fantastic few days of exhibitions and entertainment.”

For more information about the Festival of Turf, head to the BIGGA website.

Keep up to date with the latest announcements and updates on Twitter by using the hashtag #FestivalofTurf

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Rain Bird Golf’s new block rotors

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Rain Bird Golf’s new block rotors: Last year, Rain Bird’s Golf Division introduced its new 702/752 Series Electric and IC (Integrated Control) Rotors, featuring faster, easier adjustments and fewer parts to simplify both maintenance and inventory. Now, Rain Bird Golf is expanding its rotor family with the 552, 702 and 752 block models, which will be available in the UK from June 2021 onwards.

“Golf Course Managers are loving the new 702/752 electric and IC rotors,” said product manager, Altan Tolan. “Now, the same popular features are available in block models. And with Rain Bird’s Timeless Compatibility™, the new internals fit in any Rain Bird case from the 1990s.”

Rain Bird Golf's new block rotors

Rain Bird Golf’s new block rotors

Rain Bird’s 552/702/752 Block Rotors offer flexibility and numerous other benefits, including a new self-adjusting stator which eliminates the need to change stator configurations when switching out nozzles, delivering consistent rotation speeds that optimise performance. The Rain Bird Block Rotors also offer a wider range of throw, which gives Course Managers greater installation flexibility and fewer parts to stock.

They have the option of setting 552 and 752 rotors at full-circle or part-circle arcs with the turn of a screw, thanks to Rain Bird’s Rapid-Adjust Technology. The rotors’ MemoryArcÒ feature retains two part-circle arc settings so that the rotors can be switched from full to part-circle operation in seconds. A Seal-A-Matic™ (SAM) check valve provides 17 feet of holdback, keeping lines charged with water and preventing low-head drainage. Top-serviceable access to the rotors’ components makes maintaining them faster and easier.

“These new block rotors are another example of how Rain Bird is bringing industry-leading rotor innovations to golf courses everywhere with diverse needs and budgets,” Tolan said. “Whether you want electric, IC or block rotors, we have a model you can depend on for consistent coverage and superior performance for better playing conditions.”

For more information about Rain Bird’s new 552/702/752 Rotors, visit rainbird.com/golf/rotors. To learn more about Rain Bird Golf’s other innovative products for golf course irrigation, visit rainbird.com/golf or 360.rainbird.com, or contact UK distributor, Rigby Taylor.

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