Cambridge University Botanic Garden welcomes 300,000 visitors a year, making it the most visited university botanic garden in the UK. Situated in the centre of Cambridge, the Grade II listed Heritage Garden covers 40 acres and is home to a collection of over 8,000 plant species to facilitate teaching and research. Equally, since its foundation it has provided a beautiful and tranquil place for everyone to enjoy. The Garden boasts four show lawns and the combination of foot traffic, marquee trucks and ride-on mowers leads to compaction. The Garden has been using Terrain Aeration’s decompaction services since as far back as 2013 and chose the deep aeration treatment for the high-profile area of the Main Lawn in front of the majestic glasshouses.
“We know Terrain Aeration’s work from years ago when development had been done at the Station Road Entrance and the lawn at the back of Cory Lodge,” says Adrian Holmes, Landscape and Machinery Supervisor at the Garden. “The lawns had been re-built after the work but were found to be compacted and the soil was not good. We had a waterlogging issue for a couple of years. The Terrain Aeration treatment rectified the problem and we know from experience it’s a long-term solution.”
This year, the Garden’s Main Lawn area was cordoned off, the machine operation creating considerable interest amongst students and visitors, and Terrain Aeration’s Terralift set to work. The weather was very good and dry, and the ground was worked easily without the need to use the Terralift’s JCB hammer drill. The machine’s probe is driven down a metre deep and highly compressed air released up to a maximum of 20Bar (280psi) to fracture the soil, opening it up for aeration, drainage and to get oxygen to the roots of the plant. On the tail end of the air blast, dried seaweed is incorporated which sticks to the walls of the fractures and fissures created by the main air blast. As pressure drops, the seaweed is mixed in the hopper unit where it swirls around with the remaining air and is then released. The seaweed swells in wet weather and keeps the fissures open. On the Main Lawn the same process was repeated in two-metre spacings, so the underground fracturing is thoroughly linked. In some extreme cases this is demonstrated by water fountains appearing from previous probe holes. In this instance the ground was found to be not as compacted as expected and the 2,500sq metre area was completed in two days, not the original three as had been expected.
“The Terrain Aeration guys were very good, prompt and efficient and quite knowledgeable,” says Adrian, “they backfilled the probe holes with Lytag, lightweight aggregate and it was as if they had never been there. It was great to have everything back to normal so quickly.” The aeration treatment completed, the lawn area was immediately open for unrestricted access to the fountains, glasshouses and horticultural and National Plant Collections.

Looking out of the window now, there is little by the way of a reminder that only a couple of months ago, most of the United Kingdom has been brought to a standstill by severe winter conditions: a blanket of deep snow and ice covered the countryside and as a result, public parks and sports pitches became unplayable.

Turf professionals, despite now having the sun on their backs, will still be working their magic on the rootzone to repair the ravages of the big freeze.

Most turf compaction problems are caused by man or beast walking or playing on the grass. However, sometimes there are other recreation activities that lead to severely compacted surfaces.

"In 1987, for the first time in their lives [the greens], I put the Vertidrain through the greens this was after the October hurricane. I used 1” tines at full depth (14”) and the soil just smeared, there was no chance to ‘shatter and fracture’ to create some structure."

Golf Consultant, Kevin Munt was the course manager at the Wentworth Club in the late 1980s and is describing on his blog, the challenge of breaking through a deep pan layer on the greens on the famous West 'Burma Road' Course - these conditions existed for him, those who preceded him and those who subsequently took over until present day.

Today, using our technology, any putting green, football pitch, bowling rink or indeed any natural grass playing surface, can benefit from treatment at depths that conventional specialist equipment cannot achieve.

We have the machinery and we will travel to most of mainland Europe to assist turf and tree care professionals with the aeration of compacted soil on sports surfaces, including rugby and football pitches, golf courses, tennis courts and bowling greens.

We can also treat the root-zone areas of fruit orchards and vineyards to a depth of one metre by injecting compressed air under high pressure to break up soil pans or to relieve poor drainage.

If you would like more details then please email us

The Met Office say that the UK is on course for a possible heatwave with a hot and dry summer saying that it will be "warmer than average temperatures and near or below-average rainfall."

The topic of climate change is constantly in the news as water becomes scarce. It is time for every gardener and lawn owner, groundsman or greenkeeper should start planning an alternative strategy than just pump unnecessary amounts of water into the ground.

We will be despatching a team into South Wales in the week beginning 4th May 2009.

If you have a need for our de-compaction service treating turf or tree roots with compressed air to a depth of one metre then please email us asap.

We are travelling out to County Waterford in the republic of Ireland and then on up to Northern Ireland in April.

If you are considering aeration on your sports pitches or golf course using compressed air and you would like to discuss what we can do then please get in touch.

If we can arrange further work around this time then the travelling costs will be shared and thus allow us to improve on the individual prices for each client.

Please telephone and ask for Lynda or drop us an email.

Taking soil core samples is the only way for turf care managers to identify what is happening with the soil structure below the turf.

Symptoms on the grass surface such as waterlogging or exceptional dry areas will naturally lead a greenkeeper or groundsman to conclude that there is a pan or compaction layer or perhaps inadequate root zone protection that may have lead to the problems.

Many gardeners who reach the end of a summer season seem to spend hours or even days in tidying up the garden borders but spend only a few minutes raking off leaves from the lawn.

However, the following spring and because there has been little or no maintenance to the lawn surface, the grass does not romp away as well as desired.

It may well be the case that a scarifier or shallow tine spiker has been used to some autumn lawn care maintenance but it is near on impossible to relieve compaction problems deeper down below grass root level.