Turf creates wild flower meadows
Golf courses looking to create a more natural look may be interested in a new product from a UK company. Wild Flower Turf, grown at Ashe Warren Farm in Hampshire, is claimed to be one of the fastest-growing grass products in the UK.
Grown at Ashe Warren Farm in Hampshire, the turf uses a compost mat as the growing medium, instead of losing a layer of top soil with every harvest. The turf is thus soilless, and, its producer has recently won the Innovation and Technology section of the Hampshire Sustainability Awards.
The seed mix has been designed to give a high proportion of flowers. Trials have resulted in what the producers describe as ‘an easy and guaranteed way of establishing a wildflower meadow.’
The turf has been used by leading housebuilder Wilson Homes and to line the banks of the Jubilee river project in Windsor. It has also been used for a number of green roof projects by architects, as an alternative to sedum mat that provides greater biodiversity and colour.
Other markets have included landscaping, particularly for large commercial building projects, as well as personal gardens, where people wish to recreate a wild flower meadow in their garden, orchard or field, and for the Quidditch pitches in the Harry Potter movies.
Now the producers are keen to explore golf applications. Owner James Hewetson-Brown said: “These are exciting times and it is very gratifying and satisfying to see the outcome of years of development turn into such a great business, bringing colour, birds and butterflies back into our gardens, parks, cities and countryside.”
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