Good turf management at Goodwood Estates

Goodwood is a beautiful estate in the heart of West Sussex covering 4,900 hectares (12,000 acres) in the village of Westhampnett, Chichester, West Sussex and is the seat of the Duke of Richmond. Phil Helmn met with Head Groundsman, Andy Boxall, to discuss one of the most varied and challenging sites in the country.

Goodwood is a beautiful estate in the heart of West Sussex covering 4,900 hectares (12,000 acres) in the village of Westhampnett, Chichester, West Sussex and is the seat of the Duke of Richmond.

Due to its location on the South coast, nestling in the beautiful hills of the south downs national park less than two hours train journey from London, has made it an ideal destination over the last twenty-five years for a variety of spectacular events. The house, built around 1600, and its grounds host the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed (usually July), whilst elsewhere on the estate the motor circuit track hosts the annual Goodwood Revival and Members Meeting (usually September and April respectively), the 'one of a kind' grass airfield has a flying school, which is busy all year round, and the Goodwood Racecourse hosts "Glorious Goodwood" (usually in June) and nineteen other (horse) race meetings from early May through to the end of October.

The aerodrome, located within the motor circuit track, is a historic airfield that was used extensively during WWII when it was known as RAF Westhampnett. Several historic aircraft continue to be housed at the aerodrome, including two Spitfires and an American Harvard fighter plane.

The Estate also includes two 18-hole golf courses, a cricket pitch, home to Chichester Cricket Club, a luxury hotel, a pub, a shooting lodge, extensive ornamental grounds and a 1,600 ha (4,000 acres) organic farm. The farm boasts an excellent selection of home brewed beer, milk and some of the finest organic cheeses on the supermarket shelves. The estate employs over 550 people and attracts 800,000 visitors a year. For good measure, the headquarters of Rolls Royce Motor Cars can be found on the estate too. an impressive line-up of activities and most involve turf management in some shape or other.

Head Groundsman, Andy Boxall (above), started his love of turf management as assistant groundsman at Brinsbury College in North Heath, Pulborough after leaving a couple of indoor factory type roles back in the early nineties. "I soon realised that I loved working outdoors and really enjoyed the diversity of the job," Andy explained. "It wasn't long before I was promoted to deputy and then later, as part of a re-shuffle of roles across the college, I became Head of grounds and Estates," Andy reminisced. "I really enjoyed my five years at the college, but I saw a job advert for an assistant groundsman at Goodwood, and although it was a demotion in role at the time, it was too good an opportunity to miss."

Since then, Andy has enjoyed a lengthy career with the Goodwood family, starting back twenty something years ago in 1998. Fair to say then, he's seen a lot of change over the years and during that time has been a valuable part of the grounds and estate team, steadily rising through the ranks and taking increased responsibility as he progressed.

Now we all know grounds are unique, but I think it reasonably fair to say that Andy and his team have one of the most varied and challenging sites to manage and maintain in the country. A bold statement I know but, apart from the sheer size of the areas (and the distance between them across the estate), it's the variety of surfaces and the complexities of the turf management which I believe warrants my declaration. However, with such a wealth of experience under his belt, this is something Andy takes in his stride. To be fair, it's something that deserves acclamation for the exacting standards he achieves day in and day out.

Goodwood team left to right: Andy Boxall, Pete Symonds, David Webb, Chris Woods, Paul Sheridan (Deputy) and Richard Aldridge

I caught up with Andy as he and his team were beginning to prepare the motor circuit for another popular annual event, the annual Members Meeting. "This is the 79th meeting," explained Andy, "and it's hugely popular with our Goodwood Road Racing Company members (GRRC). It attracts over 20,000 visitors a day who come to watch vintage cars and motorbikes race around the Goodwood track."

As Andy drives me around the motor circuit, dodging scaffolders vans, signage contractors, marquee lorries and grandstand construction forklift trucks, we begin to discuss the challenges and complexities of continually preparing for events, and more crucially, repairing the ground after the spectators have gone home and the grandstands have been dismantled.

"Early in the season, when the weather is cold or wet (or both), it can sometimes be a bit disheartening when preparing for an event. We are so passionate in trying to produce a first class environment for everyone to enjoy, it can be extremely challenging to say the least, but that's just nature and it's taken me a while to understand you can only do your best" Andy explained, "It takes a lot of hard work and dedication on the part of my team, but when it goes well it's an amazing feeling of accomplishment when everything comes together and the site looks fantastic."

Left: Spitfires on the airfield during Revival meeting Right: Right: Goodwood aerodrome during WWII as RAF Westhampnett

"The two real challenges we face in the event season are protecting the turf during the event build-up and repairing the damage quickly after the event," Andy explained. "The time between events isn't very long when you remember it can take approximately four weeks to build up for an event and the same time to clear up. We need to be quick off the mark and supercharge our repair schedule to have everything ready for the following event."

Andy went on, "We use the services of a local grounds contractor to assist us in the renovations. The bare areas left from the grandstands, kiosks and tented villages are thoroughly raked for debris, lightly tilthed to create a seed bed and finally direct seed drilled at 50gms per square metre. If the weather is favourable, we apply a pre-seed fertilizer to boost growth and constantly water the area using hose and travel sprinklers," Andy explained. "One of the biggest decisions is when to seed or turf damaged areas following an event. The decision has always had to be based on the weather conditions, size of area, cost and timescale of recovery."

Andy clarified, "My repair timescale is sometimes very condensed, and can be as little as eight weeks. Yes, seed will grow easily in that time but not sufficient to mature enough to withstand thousands of foot traffic and temporary structures of an event. What does help is the use of strong growing rye turf sourced locally and the predominant use of DLF seed tetraploid J4Turf perennial rye," Andy explained.

This brings us nicely on to the other unique area of responsibility for Andy and his team, the maintenance of a fully operational, 365 days a year grass airfield. "There are three runways we look after," explained Andy. "It's quite a task maintaining these to the required standard for light aircraft to operate safely from all year round. The turf is constantly under pressure to perform and ground conditions must be exactly right for aircraft to fly."

Goodwood has its own flying school and healthy flying club membership and is also the home to a spitfire flying school which means Andy and his team need to be constantly focussed on maintaining this large expanse of specialist turf. "The added challenge is that these areas have tented villages and marquees on them for around 122 days each year during event season," Andy revealed. "The surfaces are in a pretty poor state when the tents are removed. We use the same recovery philosophy as the other areas, deciding to either turf with rye or use the J4 tetraploid seed. Traffic management of the aircraft is vital at this stage as safety is crucial, so we swap the use of runways to allow germination (and maturity build up) time for recovery."

Andy explained that he has one permanent member of his team dedicated to the runway at all times. The vast area is cut using the Toro 5910 wide deck rotary mower, which takes two days to complete the task and repairs are carried out by either contractors or the other members of the team. "The runways were partly re-built three years ago and are now exceptionally smooth and drain a lot better than in the past. We don't have an irrigation system so, in the height of the summer, we use our large water bowser to run up and down the runways to keep the turf alive. It's a long job and, due to the pressure of traffic movement, we must do this incredibly early in the morning before the runways open for business."

To conclude, it was great to catch up with Andy and the gang again and a pleasure to visit the site during the final stages of the build-up for the 79th annual Member Meeting this year. The guys do an amazing job and the passion and enthusiasm shines through in the product they produce time and time again. Congratulations Andy and all the best to you and your team for the forthcoming year!

Toro Groundsmaster 3500 sidewinder rotaries x 2
Toro Groundsmaster 5910 wide area mower
Iseki cut and collect ride on mower
Pedestrian hand rotary mowers x 4
Stihl strimmer's x 6
Flymo hover mower
24,000lt water bowser
Stihl backpack blowers (4 electric) x 6
Stihl hedgecutters (1 electric) x 6
Ford ranger pick-up truck
Renault van
Toro Workman utility
New Holland T5 125HP tractor
New Holland Boomer 35HP tractor
Sisis mega slitter
Sisis Quadraplay