Constructed Wetlands Ireland

St Ives - Cracking up!

By Laurence Gale MSc in Golf on 6th Aug 2011 12:00

Several weeks of prolonged snow cover through December and early January, followed by a very dry March and April, has meant that many golf clubs are desperate for some favourable weather to help get their course set up and performing well for their members and customers. As I write, the first three weeks of May have also been devoid of rain, especially on the eastern side of England .

One club that is desperate for a change in the weather is St Ives (Hunts) Golf Club, near Cambridge, a brand new inland links style course that opened last May, at the start of another summer of drought like conditions in East Anglia! Built on heavy fen land clay soils, and exposed to prevailing winds, it desperately needs some rain to stimulate growth out on the course.

As I walk the course with Course Manager, Phil Gates MG, it is immediately evident how the weather patterns of the past fourteen months have played havoc with the growing in period. "The recent dry spring has affected the course considerably," says Phil. "It's more like the end of July rather than the beginning of May. We desperately need some rain." If we have another summer like last year, we'll be flat out just trying to keep the course alive."

"The greens, tees and fairways are holding up pretty well, thanks to irrigation and hand watering. But, there are large tracts of the course that are drying out so much that the clay soil is shrinking, leaving large cracks in the surface big enough to get your fist down! Most of the wetland areas are also drying out and the level of the reservoir has dropped several feet."

It certainly has been a testing couple of years for the greenkeeping staff, who have been working hard to maintain a brand new course that is still growing in.
Phil came to the course in April 2008 to help oversee the building of the greens, tees and fairways - most of the shaping and large soil moving had been completed before he arrived.

He has worked at several clubs and has gained a lot of experience in overseeing construction projects, notably at the K Club in Ireland and Trentham Golf Club in Staffordshire. He also worked with Laurence Pithie MG, learning, in the process, a great deal about management and how to develop staff.

Permaculture in Ireland, a few links

FH Wetland Systems Ltd. is an environmental consultancy company based in Co. Clare. FH Wetland Systems started in Cork in 1996 with a particular emphasis on designing and planting constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment, and now also offers a range of environmental services including Sustained Urban Drainage Systems, habitat and catchment management, pollution control consultancy and edible landscaping nationwide. extract from database: Cornflower Response (Ireland) the Utilisation and conservation of native species …. We had started the first Irish Permaculture Design Centre to practice, then we were raided by the state police and they destroyed our first national collect of species and dug up our composting toilets. needless to say 20 years later we still hardly recovered…. Leave No Trace Ireland is a network of organisations and individuals with an interest in promoting the responsible recreational use of the outdoors. As increasing numbers of people seek the beauty and exhilaration of outdoor recreation, our collective mark on the environment and its natural processes, increases. Litter, disturbance to vegetation, water pollution, wildlife, livestock and other people are all indicators of the need to develop a national ethic that protects both natural and cultural heritage. Techniques designed to minimise the social and environmental impacts to these areas are incorporated into the Leave No Trace Outdoor Ethics Education Programme as seven Principles. In 2000, after a lot of hard work, we established ourselves in the hills of Cork on a 150-acre site. Our dream of establishing an educational example of living comfortably with ecological and sustainable concepts, or permaculture, had become a reality. We began to develop the site as a micro-model, trialling a combination of new and old ideas that could be replicated on a larger scale, and built the first of our ecologically sound houses. Teaching Centre at http://www.unicornecofoundation.org/index.html Design services and wildflowers. Native species seed mixtures and bespoke solutions for agroforestry, polycultures, green roof, roads, NRA, SSI’s Via NPWS, Co Council Parks and Biodiverse habitats.

Wastewater Treatment in Constructed Wetlands with Horizontal Sub-Surface Flow

Wetland Systems, Storm Water Management Control

Treatment wetlands

Management and ecology of freshwater plants, proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Aquatic Weeds, European Weed Research Society

Constructed wetlands for the treatment of landfill leachates