Wolves Put Trust In ICL Granulars

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Wolves Put Trust In ICL Granulars: Wayne Lumbard, Head Groundsman at Wolverhampton Wanderers FC has reason to celebrate. Not only has the team been promoted to the Premier League, but in his opinion the pitch is at the best it has ever been throughout his thirteen-year tenure at the club – with a little help from ICL.

It is safe to say that Wayne has experienced some highs and lows at the club. However, after being relegated twice, optimism at the club is now at an all-time high.

Wolves Put Trust In ICL Granulars

“Collectively, what everyone at the club has done has been the main ingredient behind our success,” he says. “The football has been the best I’ve ever seen here the pitch has been consistently great all season – everything on and off the pitch has just clicked.”

Wayne acknowledges that the relatively new owners have been instrumental in Wolves’ rise back to the highest heights of English football, and they have certainly signalled some substantial improvements.

Last year, a state-of-the-art Desso Grassmaster hybrid pitch was installed at the Molineux Stadium and after being hugely impressed, the owners sanctioned three more to be built at the Sir Jack Hayward Training Centre in Compton Park.

With a completely new stadium pitch to work with, Wayne chose to adhere to a granular fertilizer programme from ICL.

“It was our first season on the new pitch at the stadium so it was a case of testing the products but the programme worked so well. I am confident that we now have everything down to a tee,” he said.

“Straight from renovation and two weeks after seeding, I applied SierrablenPlus Renovator 20-20-8 as a base feed at a rate of 30 g/m² and continued to apply this all the way through the season until the final game of the season.

“After the initial base feed, it was a case of applying the spring and summer fertilizers at the correct time. We had huge success with Greenmaster Pro-Lite NK 12-0-12 which we applied at 30g/m2 before we moved into Autumn with Greenmaster Pro-Lite Double K at 30g/m2 because we needed more potassium than nitrogen at that time of year. Into winter, we decided to go with a Greenmaster Pro-Lite Invigorator 4-0-8 at 30g/m2 while still continuing with regular feeds of ProTurf 20-0-7 at 25g/m2 – which we had been applying since June.

“It is all about applying the right products at the right time and in the right place. Personally, I think what is more important than anything, is the overlap of the products so that you have that even line of consistency throughout the season.

“I’ve been using ICL products since 1983 and they give you everything you want, not just technically, but aesthetically as well. What I like is that there is something for whatever the problem, whatever the issue. Whatever you want, there is a product.

“With the pressures that groundsmen are under today with having to produce a pitch for match day, I want guarantees and that is what I get with ICL. Quite simply, they are products that I can trust and along with the back-up assistance I receive from Emma Kilby (ICL Technical Area Sales Manager) is as good as the products themselves.

“I sit down with Emma at the end of each season, we look at the iTurf programme we had in place and how the pitches at the stadium and training ground performed. At this stage, if we need to make any tweaks to our programme, then we will. Based on the last twelve months, I can’t see us making too many changes – the pitches have performed fantastically well and along with the grounds team, ICL products have played their part in our success.”

Please contact ICL on 01473 237100 or visit http://www.icl-sf.co.uk or http://www.icl-sf.ie if you are in Ireland.

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Football’s “Made in England” Pitches

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Football’s “Made in England” Pitches: Sunday’s World Football Cup Final, the first-ever to be staged on a revolutionary hi-tech playing surface, is set to deliver a multi-million pound boost to SIS Pitches, the English firm behind the groundbreaking technology.

Cumbria-based SIS Pitches installed its hybrid surfaces using patented fibre injection technology with undersoil aeration system in six of the 12 tournament venues, including Moscow’s 81,000-capacity Luzhniki Stadium, which will host Sunday’s decider between France and Croatia.

Football’s “Made in England” Pitches

Luzhniki’s pitch uses SISGrass, – 95% natural grass reinforced with 5% synthetic fibres – and SISAir, a unique aeration system capable of removing a deluge of rain from the surface in just five seconds, whilst optimising root moisture via a network of undersoil pipes.

George Mullan, CEO of SIS Pitches, said: “With around one billion people expected to watch the final, there’s clearly pressure to get the pitch in top condition, despite it being used for over 60 hours – the equivalent of a full Premier League season – in the past five weeks. That would have been impossible on a traditional all-grass pitch.

“Everyone has been raving about the quality of football at this tournament and our pitches have certainly given Modric, Lukaku, Mbappe and Kane a brilliant platform to perform on. The feedback we’ve had from everyone involved has been hugely positive. It’s the first worldwide showcase for these technologies to be combined at a World Football Cup final and it’s performed perfectly.”

The six World Football Cup stadia using SISGrass are Luzhniki, Spartak, Samara, Kaliningrad, Saransk and Rostov.

Football’s “Made in England” Pitches

Having installed over 80 hybrid surfaces worldwide, including English Premier League sides Chelsea, Newcastle United, Fulham and Bournemouth, as well as Scottish champions Celtic and the English FA’s St George’s Park complex, with Barcelona to follow, SIS Pitches predicts annual revenues will grow from £55m to £65m in 2019.

Mullan said: “We’re seeing huge interest from professional sports teams in the US and Japan, as well as the enormous American university sector and we’re installing eight SISGrass pitches in France this summer alone.”

Founded in 2001, SIS Pitches employs over 340 staff worldwide, with manufacturing headquarters in Maryport, Cumbria.

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Colour Splash Wows At Burnham

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Colour Splash Wows At Burnham: Lee Bishop, Course Manager at Burnham Beeches Golf Club in South Buckinghamshire, has said that Limagrain UK’s range of Colour Splash flower mixtures have helped him to transform an unsightly area into a stunning display of vibrant flowers – much to the delight of the members.

Situated in the Thames Valley in South Buckinghamshire, Burnham Beeches measures 6,458 yards, has a Par 70 and offers a true and challenging test of golf. Founded in 1891, it is the oldest club in Buckinghamshire after it was founded by a group of locals who called a public meeting in the village school.

Colour Splash Wows At Burnham

Over the years the course has gained a great reputation and has been graced with players such as James Braid, J H Taylor and Harry Vardon who, between them, won the British Open no less than 16 times, as well as other golfing legends such as Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer.

Lee has been working at Burnham Beeches for an impressive 20 years and has been the Course Manager for the last 10. Along with six other members of staff Lee tends to the course, which is located in a beautiful setting on the edge of the historic Burnham Beeches woodland and is framed by a large number of mature trees.

Surrounded, mostly, by natural beauty there was however one particular area of the course which Lee felt needed improving.

“There was a bit of a wasteland area around our nets and the clubhouse directly overlooked it,” he says. “To be honest it was very scruffy and it wasn’t a great view for our members. It definitely needed a makeover and that is why we thought we would try the Colour Splash mixtures from Limagrain.”

Limagrain UK’s range of Colour Splash flower mixtures are used in a broad range of landscape and amenity areas throughout the UK. The much loved brand was first established over ten years ago where the development of the mixtures were created in the beautiful county of Loir-et-Cher, in the centre of France. With nine mixtures in the Colour Splash range there is a floral arrangement for every requirement – whether it be a golf course, a local authority green space or any other establishment that has an area which needs brightening up.

For Burnham Beeches, Lee initially chose Aurora – a medium height mixture which grows to around a half-metre tall. It contains Sunbow Zinnia and Trianon Cosmos which provide more effective and long-lasting flowering. After using this mixture for two years running and receiving huge praise from club members, Lee decided to add the Festival mixture this year.

“The Aurora mixture was really successful and I wanted to enhance the area with another mixture. I used the Festival seed this year because it will add a bit more height and can be seen even more so from a distance. The area is visible from quite a few areas on the golf course so it will be there for everybody to see.

Colour Splash Wows At Burnham

“The members absolutely love it and have been really supportive. Once they saw the stunning array of flowers, and the potential it had, they started pushing for us to do more areas – hence why we are going to do even more areas with the Colour Splash next year.”

The Colour Splash range of mixtures are extremely easy to sow and the resulting vigorous plants are more than capable of competing with weeds. Their vigour is equally matched by robustness; resisting long periods of drought. According to Lee they are also a low cost option for those wanting an abundance of colour in fairly quick time.

“It is such a simple process. All I do is hire a rotorvator, use a small bit of weed killer and that is it. The seed mixtures are not expensive whatsoever – you get good, quick germination and I would encourage people to do it.

“I’ve also introduced bees to the area and have installed a couple of hives. There is a lot of press about bees and how scarce they are now so I think it is a great thing to do. We’ve got information boards about the bees on how we need to look after them and how the Colour Splash mixtures will help protect and make them flourish.

“My decision in choosing the Colour Splash was both because of the environmental benefits and the great aesthetics they provide – so if we can give something back to nature at the same time as the course looking great, then I think that is a job well done.”

For further information, please contact Limagrain UK on 01472 371471 or visit the company’s website www.lgseeds.co.uk/mm

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Agronomic Services A Success At Wolves

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Agronomic Services A Success At Wolves: Following on from Wolverhampton Wanderers FC’s incredible season, being promoted to the Premier League,  Agronomic Services Ltd are delighted to announce their continued working partnership with Wayne Lumbard and his team.

David Snowden of Agronomic Services Ltd said “We are thrilled for Wayne, his team and the club, it has been fantastic to follow this season and the quality of the pitch has been superb. We have been particularly pleased with feedback from industry colleagues and Groundsman, it is a testament to Wayne and his team.”

Agronomic Services A Success At Wolves

The combination of Eon Bio, which gives rapid establishment and mass rooting, in particular during renovations, combined with Floratine foliar nutrition and excellent Groundsmanship has been the recipe for success at the Molineux and Training Grounds.

Wayne Lumbard commented that the most difficult part of his job in the last season had been the installation and the renovation of the pitch and by September the pitch “just got better and better.”

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EcoBunker and Capillary Concrete Collaboration

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EcoBunker and Capillary Concrete Collaboration: The Bukit course at Singapore Island Country Club, originally designed by Scottish legend James Braid in 1924 is the venue for a new partnership between two of the worldʼs leading bunker technology firms. At SICC, Capillary Concrete and EcoBunker have come together to produce bunkers that are fully sealed; lined with Capillary Concreteʼs industry leading product, and with a low edge produced using EcoBunkerʼs patented synthetic solution.

Five bunkers have been built under the supervision of EcoBunker’s global installation specialist, Llewelyn Matthews on the short par three seventeenth hole of the Bukit course, which was the only hole on the course not to be included in a renovation completed in 2017. After the success of this trial work, the club intends to move forward with a similar treatment of all 80 bunkers on its Island course.

EcoBunker and Capillary Concrete Collaboration

Although the EcoBunker solution has been most commonly associated with revetted bunkers as seen typically on links courses, Capillary Concrete CEO Martin Sternberg, who was at SICC for the initial build, says that this joint offering is ideal for use in a much wider range of circumstances. “This low edge solution is ideal for courses that want dramatic reductions in the cost of bunker maintenance,” he said. “For us at Capillary Concrete, we know our product works well for the base of bunkers, but we have many clients for whom the EcoBunker edging solution is an important source of added value. Combining the two solutions produces bunkers that look good and are totally sealed and impervious to penetration.”

Richard Allen, EcoBunkerʼs CEO, said: “We have known for a long time that our solution works very well for these low edged bunkers as well as for the more traditional-looking revetted bunkers with which we are associated, but it is great to get this kind of recognition from a company of Capillary Concreteʼs status. The links between us are strengthening as evidenced by our joint portfolio and many new clubs are set to benefit as the pipeline of future similar projects grows’’

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