Trial turns to complete EcoBunker rebuild at Dudsbury Golf Club
Dudsbury Golf Club, in the Ferndown area of Bournemouth, is in the middle of a five year programme to rebuild all of its bunkers using the EcoBunker artificial edging solution.
Dudsbury was originally designed by the well-known architect Donald
Steel, and is part of a hotel and spa complex. The facility was
bought a few years ago by local couple David and Beatt Braban, who
have striven to make it one of the best courses in the south of
England. David died in February this year, but Beate continues to
drive Dudsbury forward and is investing heavily in new
facilities.
"Dudsbury first approached us in 2016," says EcoBunker chief
executive Richard Allen. "At the time, the course had bunkers with
sand faces and no lips. You could putt out of them, and some
members did. They suffered from sand wash down, edge erosion, sand
contamination and resultant drainage problems.. We proposed
reducing the sand gradient and introducing our product as a low
edge, and protecting the underlying drainage by introducing a
bunker liner."
"Our bunkers were a maintenance nightmare," says course manager
Warren Moss. "My crew consists of four qualified greenkeepers, two
part timers and one apprentice, and every time we had a downpour
practically the whole team would have to spend hours and hours
pushing sand back up the faces. We saw the EcoBunker product at
Royal Winchester, and decided to give it a go."
EcoBunker construction specialist Llewelyn Matthews spent time
at Dudsbury showing Moss and his team how to construct the
EcoBunker Advanced edging solution, which binds the artificial
turves with engineered backfill to produce greater stability -
something which is of particular importance for shallow-walled, low
edge installations like this, since, as they weigh less, there is
less gravity-driven stability. "Llew did two bunkers and we did two
more ourselves," says Moss. "They performed so well we decided to
do ten more last winter, we'll do another ten this winter, and in
five years or so we'll be entirely EcoBunkered. The synthetic edge,
combined with the astroturf liner that we have adopted means that
our bunkers are totally sealed. They drain now, there's no wash
downs, and we hardly have to do any weeding or strimming around
them."
"When building the initial bunkers, we took a conscious decision
not to get too elaborate with the edge shaping," says Allen. "The
course was not designed with that style in mind, and it was
important that we didn't replace one set of maintenance issues -
crumbling edge, sand contamination - with another burden of
strimming and fly mowing. It was important that Warren and his crew
could mow around these bunkers using ride-on mowers as far as
possible. I'm always happy to get involved in one of these low-edge
projects. Our product has become associated with links-style
revetted pot bunkers, but we know it works great in a much wider
range of circumstances, and it's very pleasing to get confirmation
of that."
Dudsbury will host a Europro Tour event in 2019
Images: Warren Moss