College lawn passes test

publication date: Jun 2, 2008

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author/source: David Harris

One of the lawns at Trinity College Cambridge had to be relaid and the college took the opportunity to incorporate a water holding material into the rootzone. Terrain Aeration, called to the college to perform onemetre deep, compressed air decompaction treatment, also injecting water-storing polymers on the final air blast, using dried, milled seaweed as a carrier.

Terrain’s M D David Green says that the combination of the aeration treatment, which opens up the subsoil creating fractures and fissures to a depth of one metre, and the dried, milled seaweed, which not only swells when wet, keeping the newly created air channels open, but also evenly distributes the water storing polymers, is good insurance against possible drought. “This combined treatment means that any future rainfall can penetrate the subsoil easily and fill the water storing polymers,” he says. “These expand to form open lattices and spaces that trap water molecules and act like mini reservoirs, absorbing water during rainfall and releasing it during periods of drought.”