Bowling Green Maintenance

The Pitch

Problem statement

The focal point of our club is our bowling green. It is essential to maintain this in the best condition possible to encourage our members to play their sport better and to maintain the standards required by our local leagues. Our green-keeper of many years standing sadly passed away in May 2021. He always used his own mower and other equipment and this is not now available to us. Our green needs to be cut 2-3 times per week and other essential maintenance carried our monthly

Solution

We need to purchase a mower and a verticutter cassette to use with the mower. These purchases will enable us to mow our green as necessary and to verticut the green every two weeks to improve aeration and remove thatch. Without this work our green will deteriorate and members will become disheartened and leave the club; we have seen this happen to other local clubs. Our target equipment is a Dennis FT510 mower and additional cassette. These are the industry standard machines for clubs of our size. New machinery is out of our reach but guaranteed used machines are available to buy and this is how we would spend an award.

Why are we best placed to deliver?

Many of our members have been involved in the sport of bowls for many years and have contacts for advice and opinion on green maintenance. Our committee is confident that we have amongst our membership the skills and desire to maintain our green to a high standard, we just need the tools to do the job. We are aware that many other local bowling greens are maintained by their members to a high standard and we wish to emulate them.

Focus Areas

Delivery plan

Budget breakdown

Beneficiaries

75 people

Expected impact

We are a thriving crown green bowling club in a village on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. Our 75 members are all retired men and women from the local community. We field 11 teams in 5 local leagues, this year 3 of our teams have topped their divisions. We also have a very active social side whereby members join in activities such as gardening, building maintenance projects, catering, etc. Covid restrictions have delayed some of plans - we wish to start a social evening where members can play bowls or just sit and chat. This will address issues of social isolation and loneliness felt by members who live alone. We have an established contact with McCarthy & Stone, who have 4 locations close to our club, and our local social prescribing service and we plan to once again invite their clients to join us to learn to play bowls or just socialise with members. Our club is important part of our members lives and it is vital that we maintain our green to enable the club to remain viable.

Track record

We are very fortunate to have been awarded grants from several organisations, most notably from Enovert Community Trust who have given us money to create our own toilet facilities, install a green irrigation system and refurbish our floodlights. Further grants have enabled us to install a defibrillator, erect three weather shelters and purchase new benches.

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