Posts tagged with “Bourne Amenity”

The GreenBlue Urban treepit trial

dscf13891200.jpg

On July 4th, GreenBlue Urban invited us to a Contractors' Day to show their offices and production facilities, launch their new RootSpace 400 soil cell system, and give a practical demonstration of how to use the system when planting a young tree in an urban environment. It was a very impressive demo and a short blog post would not do it justice. So, to get the full story, head on to this special page for a longer read with many photos. We are grateful to Louise and Lloyd at GreenBlue Urban for the invitation and help with the article!

Updated 13 July: GreenBlue Urban's report from the day, with video, is now available on this page.

British Sugar topsoil

dscf13461200.jpg

Last week, we were kindly invited by British Sugar to visit their factory in Wissington, Norfolk. It was not only interesting but great fun too, with our hosts having laid on a great package of study visits, ending up in a pub in Bury St Edmunds watching the football... but that's another story!

You may well wonder what the connection is between sugar and soil. It's simply this - every year British Sugar receive getting on for 10 million tonnes of sugar beet to their four factories in East Anglia. Although they beets have been cleaned to some extent at the farm, there deliveries still include something like 300,000 tonnes of soil, all of which is of course carefully washed off at the factories before the sugar production starts.

About twenty years ago, our generous host Andy Spetch came up with the idea of doing something better with this resource, rather than just dumping it. So now, the water used for washing the beets is pumped into big settlement ponds - you can see one in front of the factory in the picture above. In the pond, the washed-off soil separates into its sand, silt and clay components, which settle in different areas. These soil components are then excavated from the ponds, and laid out to dry on the fields. The drying process takes up to 2 years, after which the soil components are mixed in exact proportions, which results in a totally consistent standard product.

Wissington is the biggest of the soil production sites, and here Andy also mixes the standard product with sands and compost to produce a limited range of special-purpose materials.

All in all, it was both instructive and enjoyable (if a bit dusty when on-site) - many thanks to Andy and Kim for having us!

Beach volleyball in the City

ashleyoptimised.jpg

It's a tradition now - every summer we deliver 160 tonnes of RH37 sand (medium USGA sand) to Canary Wharf for Action for Kids' beach volleyball courts. This is the tenth year they lay on the event - it starts today (9 July) and carries on to 3 August (when there will be a lot of sweeping-up to do).

The event includes a number of tournaments featuring elite players, as well as amateurs in stirring moments like the Bartenders Tournament (tomorrow) and the Agencies Challenge Cup (on 27 July).

The picture shows two of our lorries lined up on Sunday morning, waiting to discharge some of all that sand.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show

combined.jpg

Lindsey and I had a great trip to the RHS Chelsea show yesterday - the weather provided a useful watering boost to the gardens in the morning (that's a polite way of saying we were totally drenched on the way across Chelsea Bridge) and then obliged with sunshine from midday onwards.

As you might imagine, the garden and floral exhibits were stunning - people were standing three deep to get near the show gardens. The Group is fortunate enough to have supplied four magnificent gardens:

  • Conway Landscaping - the Embroidered Minds Epilepsy Garden
  • Frosts Landscape Construction Limited - trade stand for Gaze Burvill Limited
  • Randle Siddeley - the LG EcoCity Garden
  • Senseless Acts of Beauty - the Pearlfisher Garden

It wasn't very easy to get to talk to anybody though - the show was very crowded. In total we spent about five hours at the show - and more or less the same time travelling there and back. London traffic!

Bowling Green

img11561200.jpg

Here's the Bourne Amenity team going bowling - enhanced with a young lad called Leo. The photo shows happy, smiling faces before the competitive instincts kicked in...

We understand Drew was the eventual winner - congratulations!