Tag Archive for: helping

DSV Seed Helping Crowborough Beacon Reach New Heights

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DSV Seed Helping Crowborough Beacon Reach New Heights: The quality of the playing surfaces at Crowborough Beacon Golf Club is the result of passion, precision – and the right seed. Course Manager Luke Jenkins has been achieving outstanding results using DSV’s PRO Summer Sport and PRO Rye Fairway mixtures from the EUROGRASS range, both of which have played a key role in improving the course’s playability and presentation.

Developed specifically for professional turf use, the EUROGRASS Pro mixtures are composed of carefully selected grass species and varieties to meet the highest standards of performance. Each blend is designed with the end user in mind – considering soil type, climate, intended use, and maintenance practices – to ensure exceptional establishment, density, and durability.

DSV Seed Helping Crowborough Beacon Reach New Heights

DSV Seed Helping Crowborough Beacon Reach New Heights

At Crowborough Beacon Golf Club, those qualities have helped elevate one of the South East’s most historic and scenic courses. Established in 1885, the club is steeped in tradition – with early members including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – and boasts a classic heathland layout renowned for its sweeping views and distinctive character.

Course Manager Luke Jenkins has been at the helm for four and a half years, leading a programme of continuous improvement that has seen the course break back into the UK’s Top 100 golf courses.

“It’s a sleeping giant of a golf course,” says Luke. “The layout and landscape are stunning, but the course needed some TLC when I arrived. My goal has been to raise standards and get Crowborough Beacon recognised again among the best in the country – which we’re now achieving.”

Luke’s journey in greenkeeping began at just 16 when he joined Shooters Hill Golf Club in south-east London as an apprentice. He quickly rose to deputy, later taking on head roles at Woodlands Manor and deputy at Royal Wimbledon, before moving to Crowborough Beacon.

His experience at clubs of varying size and stature gave him a solid understanding of what makes great course.

A big part of that success, Luke says, comes down to using the right seed mixtures.

“On the tees, we use PRO Summer Sport, which gives us quick germination and excellent wear tolerance,” he explains. “We’re repairing divots every day, and because our tees are small, I need grass to be growing within a week. The DSV mix establishes really fast, gives great colour, and stands up to heavy play.”

For the fairways, Luke relies on PRO Rye Fairway, a 70/30 blend of fescue and ryegrass that balances strength with a natural fescue finish.

“Our fairways are naturally fescue-dominant, but the rye gives us early-season colour and resilience,” he adds. “We don’t have fairway irrigation, so we rely on strong establishment and drought tolerance. After overseeding, we saw germination in just over three weeks and fantastic coverage.”

Luke was first introduced to DSV through Craig Rodwell at Soil Biology, whose nutritional advice and recommendations have helped shaped the club’s agronomic approach. After trialling the seed on tees, Luke was quickly convinced to extend its use.

“The uptake was excellent, pricing was competitive, delivery was quick – all the boxes were ticked,” he says. “Most importantly, it worked. I’m not going to use something that doesn’t perform, and DSV seed has consistently impressed us.”

DSV Seed Helping Crowborough Beacon Reach New Heights

DSV Seed Helping Crowborough Beacon Reach New Heights

Luke has also visited DSV’s breeding and research centre in the Netherlands, where he gained a deeper appreciation of the company’s commitment to innovation.

“It was an absolute eye-opener,” says Luke. “The scale of the operation and the amount of research and development that goes into producing these mixtures is incredible. Some varieties take over ten years to bring to market. Seeing that process made me realise how much science and effort goes into every bag we use.”

With a settled team and a clear vision, Luke’s leadership has not only improved playing conditions but also boosted membership and morale across the club.

“We’re lucky to work in such a beautiful place,” he concludes. “If we keep improving the surfaces and stay focused on the details, the sky’s the limit. Using the right seed is a big part of that, and DSV has certainly helped us get where we are today.”

Please visit www.dsv-uk.co.uk/products/amenity for more information and follow on social media @EuroGrassUKSeed.

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MM50 Helping Tees Stand the Test of Time

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MM50 Helping Tees Stand the Test of Time: At Southerndown Golf Club in the Vale of Glamorgan, MM50 grass seed has become an essential product. With tees that endure relentless wear from players and exposure to some of the UK’s harshest growing conditions, Course Manager Andrew Mannion has come to rely on the hard-wearing ryegrass mix to keep surfaces strong, consistent, and fit for year-round play.

MM50 is one of the UK’s most popular grass seed mixtures – and with good reason. The blend of fine-leaved, high shoot density dwarf perennial ryegrasses is built for performance: it tolerates close mowing down to 4-5mm, recovers rapidly from wear, and maintains excellent year-round colour. For Andrew, it’s a perfect match for a course that refuses to follow convention.

MM50 Helping Tees Stand the Test of Time

MM50 Helping Tees Stand the Test of Time

 

“Southerndown’s unique,” says Andrew, who’s been at the club for over 30 years. “It’s like managing two courses in one. The front nine is very sandy and free-draining, almost links-like. The back nine is more loamy, heathland terrain. It means you’ve got to think differently about how you manage each area – and what you grow.”

The course sits around 70 metres above sea level on exposed, windswept land. Underfoot, a layer of acidic sand overlays limestone – an unusual soil profile shared by just a few sites in the UK. “That limestone layer can be two metres down, or just a couple of inches below the surface. It creates real challenges when it comes to aeration and water movement. We’ve got good irrigation, but water doesn’t hang around for long.”

Add in grazing rights – Southerndown is built on common land and home to up to 600 sheep, depending on the season – and it’s easy to see why traditional turf practices don’t always deliver.

For many years, Andrew stuck with a fescue-based programme passed down from his predecessor. But in areas of heavy traffic, especially on par-threes, the turf simply couldn’t keep up. “They’d turn to dust in the summer,” he says. “The recovery wasn’t quick enough. We weren’t getting the results we needed, and we were doing the same things every year expecting a different outcome.”

The spark for change came from an unlikely place: Wimbledon. “I remember watching coverage of Centre Court, and they mentioned these new dwarf ryegrass varieties. I thought, well, that’s just a big golf tee really. So, we trialled some MM50 on the worst par-threes – and the difference was incredible.”

The trial showed immediate improvements. “It gave us better grass coverage, but more than that, the recovery from divots was two or three times quicker than anything we’d seen with fescues. In some cases, you’d get shallow divots regenerating naturally without any intervention.”

That initial success quickly led to a full overseeding programme. “We moved to using MM50 across all the tees. It was an easy sell to the club – we could literally say, ‘Look at the par-threes. Why wouldn’t we want all the tees to look like that?’”

MM50 Helping Tees Stand the Test of Time

MM50 Helping Tees Stand the Test of Time

The benefits went beyond performance. “Golfers weren’t questioning it. The ryegrass is so fine-leaved that they didn’t even realise it was rye. They just saw a tight, clean surface that looked good and played well.”

MM50 has even made its way onto selected fairways – especially those that suffered during the prolonged heat and drought of 2018. “That year really opened our eyes,” Andrew recalls.

“We always thought fescue would bounce back after going dormant, but it didn’t. It just disappeared. We were dragging hoses out onto bare fairways, trying to save them. That’s when we looked at what we’d achieved with MM50 on the tees and thought – why not try it here too?”

“We’ve got a busy course. It’s used 365 days a year. Members expect value for money. You can’t keep relying on a surface that can’t keep up. MM50 gave us a way forward.”

For Andrew, MM50 hasn’t just improved playing surfaces – it’s changed his outlook. “I’m not one of those who hides behind tradition for tradition’s sake. We tried the fescue route. It worked up to a point, but it wasn’t giving us what we needed. MM50 has helped us manage trickier areas, maintain better grass cover, and deliver a better experience for the golfer.”

For further information, please contact MM Sports Seed on 01386 791102 or visit the company’s website www.mm-seeds.co.uk.

You can also follow the company on X: @MM_Seed.

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Pro Flora helping to boost biodiversity

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Pro Flora helping to boost biodiversity: After witnessing good results with the Johnsons J All Bent mixture, Woolley Park Golf Club are now enjoying similar success with new eco-friendly areas created with DLF’s Pro Flora range.

The project to enhance habitats and encourage diversity of wildlife has gathered pace in recent years under the stewardship of Head Greenkeeper John Rowbottom who, with the help of DLF’s Stuart Yarwood, has not only boosted biodiversity but brought new life to previously unmanageable areas.

Pro Flora helping to boost biodiversity

Pro Flora helping to boost biodiversity

The West Yorkshire club are longstanding users of seed mixtures from DLF. “We’ve used many different mixtures over the years, and specifically J All Bent for the last five. This just seems to really suit our conditions” explains John, who has worked at Woolley Park since its inception in 1995. “We’ve got USGA spec root zone and we’ve found that the bent grass thrives here, the benefits of which are two-fold – improving the quality of the sward and helping us in the constant fight against Poa, with the Bent outcompeting fescues and other varieties.”

Oversown twice a year during spring and autumn renovations, the reliability and results of the J All Bent programme on the greens is ongoing, allowing John to turn his attention to the viability of other areas. “During the COVID lockdowns we had the time to fully appreciate the rich abundance of wildlife that returned to the site while the course was closed. This really kickstarted our trials with wildflower areas, and since then we’ve worked on another patch of land each year with the results getting better and better! It’s been great to see that, as a result of this work, much of the fauna that returned over that time has stayed.”

“For me, it is essential that whatever we do on the course is sympathetic to the environment around it” he adds. So, when a major renovation project two years ago left a large area of ‘unmanageable’ land, it was then that John consulted with his DLF Regional Technical Manager Stuart Yarwood for advice. “I didn’t want bright, bold colours, instead something more subtle and in keeping with the surroundings that would provide some cover and habitat for pheasants and ground nesting birds.”

Stuart recommended Pro Flora 13, delivering a species-rich mix of UK native origin wildflowers and fine leaved low growing grasses. “This has given us exactly what we wanted from an ecological perspective and, visually, blends in brilliantly beside our in-play areas.”

“I believe it is our responsibility as custodians of land to ensure we are doing what we can to protect the environment, and this is something both Stuart and I are keen to continue developing with our wildflower projects. We are incredibly fortunate to be able to look after 150 acres of land and seeing golfers and wildlife out there enjoying what we craft is priceless.”

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