Germinal’s New Amenity Website

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Germinal’s New Amenity Website: Germinal has confirmed the launch of a brand new, amenity specific website aimed at making it easier for landscape architects and sports turf professionals to get the very best results from their amenity spaces.

 The new website, www.germinalamenity.com, contains all the information landscape architects and turf professionals need to optimise the performance of their amenity facilities: the website includes complete specifications and usage guides for Germinal’s Grade ‘A’ range of landscaping and sports grass seed mixtures as well as full details of its grass and wildflower landscaping mixtures for everything from low maintenance reclaimed land to saline road verges, shaded habitats, fine lawns and an array of natural habitats.  All product details can be easily cut and pasted into external documents, making it simple for landscape architects to insert them directly into the appropriate project specification.

Germinal's New Amenity Website

“As well as constantly investing in research and development to bring first class grass and wildflower seeds and turf care products to the landscaping and sports turf sectors, we are also conscious of the constant need to provide the industry with the latest news and advice,” explains Richard Brown, Germinal Amenity Sales Manager.

“Our popular range of ‘Grade A’ grass seed mixtures is always evolving to ensure our sports and landscaping specific products remain the best available.  The new website has therefore been developed to make it easier for new and existing customers to keep abreast of our developing range of products and to enable them to specify the most appropriate products to suit each site’s individual requirements.

“We’ve also populated the new website with a collection of advice guides and video resources covering a range of useful topics from simple over-seeding and sowing ‘how-to’ guides, to more detailed explanations of the importance of key success factors such as soil pH, the use and application of macro and micro nutrients and how to physically manage recently renovated and established swards and amenity landscapes.”

The website also contains a selection of standardised fertiliser plans – written and designed by Germinal’s FACTS (Fertiliser Advisers Certification and Training Scheme) qualified experts – to enable everyone from novice gardeners to professional turf growers to get the best results from their amenity facilities.

The new www.germinalamenity.com website also features a ‘Product Selector’ tool which has been designed to make it as easy and simple as possible for landscape architects to find the most appropriate products for each project’s specific needs.  “As well as our extensive Grade ‘A’ range of landscaping specific grass seed mixtures, our portfolio also includes a wide range of ‘Regional Environmental’ and ‘General Landscaping’ wildflower mixtures.

“These products, which contain only the very best quality grass and wild flower seeds – including an extensive selection of 100% native species – enable landscape architects to choose the most appropriate wild flower and/or grass seed mixtures to suit their specific project,” Richard Brown adds.  “However, with such a wide variety of options to choose from, specifying the right products for each individual project can often be a time-consuming, and, at times, confusing process.  We’ve therefore developed an interactive configurator tool which streamlines the process and makes it fast and simple for landscape architects to select the best products for each project.  And, just as before, any orders placed before 2pm will be shipped and delivered the next working day.”

A new section, which contains details of a range of CPD resources and seminars, has also been added: landscape architects can contact their local Germinal technical specialist who will be happy to visit them to provide more detail on a range of topics such as how to establish and maintain wildflowers and understanding the latest plant nutrition protocols.

Reesink Award Winners Announced

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Reesink Award Winners Announced: Reesink Turfcare is delighted to announce the winners of its Aftermarket Dealer Awards. The awards recognise Outstanding Performances in the three areas of Service, Parts and Skills, as well as recognising an overall Dealer of the Year for ‘Excellence in Customer Support’.

In keeping with its Service Level Agreement (SLA), which benchmarks great customer service, Reesink awards those dealers achieving the best scores, rated on quarterly Key Performance Indicators (KPI), within each of the three sections, while the Dealer of the Year Award combines the KPI scores from all three.

Reesink Award Winners Announced

The winners are: Outstanding Performance in Service goes to Redtech in Coventry, while Lloyd Ltd in Carlisle excelled in Skills, and Revill Mowers in Gloucestershire in Parts. The coveted Dealer of the Year award has two joint winners: Cheshire Turf Machinery in Stockport and Revill Mowers in Gloucestershire.

The runners-up are: Russells Groundcare in Yorkshire for both Parts and Service, and Oliver Landpower in Kings Langley for Skills.

Ever since Reesink adopted the principles of a customer service level agreement to set a baseline standard for after-sales customer support in 2015, its strategy has been to ensure that it delivers strong customer service with all its business partners, says David Jackman, Reesink’s aftermarket manager: “We’re looking to continually improve on our customer experience after a sale completes, and our Service Level Agreement outlines the core customer service standards, goals and considerations adopted by all our Authorised Service and Dealer Locations, which helps to earn the loyalty of our customers.

“Part of this extensive remit are the awards, which give us a standard set of common goals, targets and values that can be shared and promoted to the end user, benefitting customer retention and business growth across our dealer network. As we expected it would be, this has been met with great enthusiasm by our dedicated dealers and has done a fantastic job of driving the aftermarket business forward.

Reesink Award Winners Announced

“We’re delighted to be able to recognise the winners and runners-up of these awards, which not only provide a snapshot of each dealers’ performance with us but also our support for them. Overall, the major benefit of this process is the benefit it brings to the end customer, which is what we’re all in it for.”

 And it’s certainly an approach that has worked with Reesink having been recognised by The Toro Company for its outstanding performance in Parts, Service and Technical Training in the past.

For more information, visit: reesinkturfcare.co.uk

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Disease Management Trials

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Disease Management Trials: This year’s STRI Research event will see Bayer continuing its study into disease prevention in pursuit of the best programme for tackling Microdochium Patch in light of recent losses to curative chemistry.

Dr Colin Mumford, Bayer technical manager, explains that the new research will build on results from last season’s set of trials, that showed preventative options outshone curatives.

Disease Management Trials

“This year the aim is to reinforce these findings and see how we can improve on current disease management programmes, with alternative and new products, as well as different application rates and timings.

“A variety of different fungicides will be put to the test, including Exteris® Stressgard® and Dedicate®, alongside a number of plant health promoting products, from two of our main distributors, Headland Amenity and Rigby Taylor,” he says.

“Once again, we’ll be testing the Microdochium Patch cover, colour and quality of the turf, with a variety of programmes including preventative fungicides, plant health products, and the last remaining curative options that mimic a more traditional approach.”

He points out that the conditions this year could be quite different to the low disease threat experienced by the STRI last season. “The turf has taken a bashing this summer, with prolonged periods of high temperatures and strong sunlight, so it’ll be very interesting to see how the turf fairs with a stressful start to the disease season.”

The trials are due to start in late August, to pre-condition the turf for improved health, and should run until spring 2019, to see if there is any effect on green-up ahead of the key playing season.

Colin explains that during the event, along with representatives from Headland Amenity and Rigby Taylor, the Bayer team will present on each of the combinations being applied to the plots, their regularity and the expected outcomes.

For more information, please visit www.environmentalscience.bayer.co.uk, Headland Amenity www.headlandamenity.com or Rigby Taylor www.rigbytaylor.com

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Glasgow Academy’s Koro FIELDTOPMAKER

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Glasgow Academy’s Koro FIELDTOPMAKER: The Glasgow Academy has become the first independent school in Scotland to purchase their own 2018 model KoroÒ FIELDTOPMAKERÒ (Koro FTMÒ) with the patented Universe® rotor from Campey Turf Care Systems.

The demands of maintaining pitches for a school that offers football, rugby, hockey, cricket and athletics on eight pitches across four locations as well as a separate sand and water based astro pitches has its own unique issues when it comes to renovations with a short 10-week window at the end of the school year.

Glasgow Academy's Koro FIELDTOPMAKER

For head groundsman, Robert Cheape, there is very little crossover time during terms with sports seasons often overlapping. His team of five also have the main school and prep school grounds to maintain and the decision to bring in a new Koro FTMÒ was to provide flexibility and choice to renovations.

“We have multiple sports with very little downtime between them,” he said. “As one season finishes the next season starts and that was one of the reasons behind getting our own KoroÒ, because we wanted the flexibility to manage the pitches in a better way.

“In our situation being able to vary to what degree we use the Koro FTMÒ on the pitches is massive and directly tackles the issue of short periods of downtime.

“We’ve got the Universe® Finesse 5mm blades on it and the material that’s been coming out with it has been unbelievable and the organic matter it’s been ripping up is very impressive, especially when we compare it other machines we’ve used in the past, it’s far superior to everything else.

“I was very impressed with it then but even more so now with the new model because of the flexibility when it comes to the different blade sizes on the Universe® rotor because it gives you the option to use what you need.

“I’d love to “Koro” off the pitches completely but because of the overlap of the various sports we just don’t get the time, it would mean taking some time off of cricket, so it would be them who would suffer, and although they are flexible there’s only so much room to manoeuvre.”

The machine was first used on the site in June 2018 and that was the first time any Koro FTMÒ had been used on the school grounds. Despite being aware of the machine through various magazine articles and demonstration days hosted by Campey, Robert had never used the machine.

With the help of Campey product specialist, Richard Heywood, during the installation, Robert and his team of seven quickly became familiar with the machine, and the man who has worked at Glasgow Academy for 30-years is already very impressed with the operation and results.

“I’ve been aware of the machine for a good few years now,” he said. “I’ve seen it in all the magazines and I’ve seen it at a couple of demos, one at Stirling Albion in 2016 and one in Fleetwood four or five years ago and Greenock Morton.

“We’ve never had the machine working in our place before, so this is the first time it’s been used. We try to keep all of our work in-house but occasionally for the bigger jobs like primary drainage we use other contractors but generally, we do it all ourselves with machines like the ShockWave 220.

“We got a good demonstration from Richard Heywood when he delivered the machine, but I think by using it more we’ll build the familiarity with it and be able to use it to greater effect on the site.”

The weight and balance of the Koro FTMÒ have been analysed resulting in a lighter, steadier ma-chine with the redistribution of weight using a removable 100kgs meaning a much smaller tractor can be used to run the machine. This is because the centre of gravity has been shifted towards the tractor making it easier to lift. Even when the weight is removed the machine still has improved balance against previous models.

For more information, visit: www.campeyturfcare.com

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Samantha Butler’s Travels With Campey

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Samantha Butler’s Travels With Campey: It has been a long and mixed few months for Australians in Europe. The Socceroos put in a valiant but ultimately disappointing display at the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the Australian cricket team fell to a 6-0 one day international loss at the hands of England.

But, for one Australian travelling to Europe under the Campey Turf Care banner it’s been a positive experience – maybe even a winning one. Samantha Butler is a horticulturist and greenkeeper back in her native Australia based at the Sydney Olympic Park and wanted to extend her knowledge and skill set to progress her career.

Samantha Butler's Travels With Campey

Her desire to do this was such that she was happy to take time off work and travel halfway around the world and swap the heat of New South Wales for the  colder climate of Macclesfield, although the heat wave has been an unexpected bonus!

“It’s been a wonderful experience and a real eye-opener,” she said. “I work for a company called the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales which is based in Sydney Olympic Park. Being one of the only females working in a major sports stadium back in Australia and wanting career progression I originally reached out to Mike O’Keefe from the Ohio State programme.

“With 3 months at Campey I’ve been to a couple of countries because they never stop. I’ve been very well looked after, and they’ve made sure everything has been in place for me and it’s been wonderful.

“I wasn’t keen on focusing on just golf because I work in a stadium that has all sorts of sports from A to Z, so, I wanted to see how different venues do different things and with Campey I’ve been to football pitches, cricket pitches, golf clubs and a few stadiums like the Aviva Stadium and Croke Park where they host similar sports to us.

“It’s a lot different over here and a lot of that is down to the cold weather. it’s interesting to know situations change in different climates and how turf comes back from colder weather. When I was in Ireland the fog was so bad you couldn’t see 10 feet in front of you, so I went to some of the nicest courses, but I couldn’t see anything!

“You get to see through the eyes of different groundsman and get a feel for what they do as well as getting to speak to them and see their machinery and equipment.

“It’s given me a good idea of how other people operate and helped me make contacts in the industry, and helps to bolster my CV, which was one of the main points of the trip.”

Following her time with Campeys, Sam will join Steve Braddock at Arsenal Football Club for 3 months to get the first-hand experience of maintaining one of the most prestigious training grounds in world football.

For more information, visit: www.campeyturfcare.com

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