Lawn 4 Renovation
No less than 36 Club Members volunteered to roll up their sleeves to help do something about Lawn 4 in our Autumn renovation, which took place in three sessions over the course of three days at the beginning of October. In the end two had to pull out because of illness, but three stalwarts apparently enjoyed themselves so much they came twice, so we had a dozen or more for each session!
Lawn 4 was completely re-surfaced just two years ago, in order to flatten out its annoying bumps and its notorious hollows, but we have been impatient to see the new sward thickening up and to become less muddy in wet weather. So we sought advice and decided to use a hollow-tine aerator to remove plugs of soil and thus improve drainage, then overseed it under a 5mm carpet of sand, over 4 tonnes of it! That was 177 bags in all, and they all had to be barrowed over from the Rec carpark. Pete Miles, Martin Alabaster and new member Chris Cheetham, in a magnificent feat of strength and endurance, shifted it all in just 2 hours, with help from several other members towards the end, stopping only for a cup of tea and some of Helen Schofield’s delicious lemon drizzle cake. The rest of the team, meanwhile, collected up all the soil plugs by hand – reminding us of ‘potato-pickers’. They will be stored and used as compost.
Session 2 saw a dozen people over-seeding and spreading sand to protect it from the birds, who looked on hungrily, and in session 3 another dozen completed the coverage of L4 and set up no-go areas along the east side of L2 & L3 which were also aerated, seeded and sanded.
This year’s Autumn lawn work was a triumph for all the Club’s able-bodied volunteers, and we hope to see new shoots springing up by mid-October, as long as the warm damp weather continues, and provided we all can resist walking on the sandy areas… We have been warned that new lawns can take 3-4 years to settle completely but, as a reward for all our efforts, the Committee hopes that L4 will one day rival L1 in terms of its sward, and may even become the ‘go-to ‘lawn at Bath!
Session 1
Session 2
Session 3
