Bourne Amenity appear in Turf Business

SPORTS TURF and landscaping contractor Bourne Amenity last year completed a brand new playing field construction at the Folkestone Academy in Kent using Barenbrug's BAR 7 and BAR Extreme grass seed mixtures. "The mixtures have performed very well since the school took over the site," says Bourne's Andrew Dennis, responsible for the project. "Overall we've had very good germination and coverage using the two mixtures and, surprisingly for a virgin site, we have not had to overseed. The project's been a great success”. Having first opened in September 2007, the school contracted Bourne to construct the new 20,000 square metres facility featuring two football pitches and a natural cricket square from scratch. "This was certainly the largest sports construction of its kind in the county at the time,” Andrew adds. "We imported new soil to build the site up by three metres from the ground to create the desired surface, then installed both deep and surface draining." With a hard-wearing, low-maintenance surface essential, Andrew says that appropriate grass seed selection was key to its specification. Hence the football pitches and cricket outfields were sown with perennial ryegrass mixture BAR 7, renowned for its outstanding wear tolerance and shoot recovery. “It provides the robustness that a school playing field needs," says Andrew. The cricket square, meanwhile, features Barenbrug's BAR Extreme, also a perennial ryegrass mixture that provides superior fineness of leaf together with excellent wear tolerance and recovery. "We chose BAR Extreme not only because it provides the fine grass required on the natural cricket square, but also because it is more robust than other cricket mixtures. It doesn't need to be ‘mollycoddled’, which is important for a school's limited resources and budget.”

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