Formby Hall Golf Resort & Spa has achieved all-fescue greens using specialist grass seed breeder Barenbrug’s BAR 2. Upon its construction three years ago, course manager Paul Wylie sowed the academy course’s greens with BAR 2, a mixture of slender creeping red fescues and chewings fescues, together with 20 percent browntop bents. But much to Paul’s surprise, there isn’t a bent in sight. “It must have been a fluke in the way the mixture was sown” he said “We drilled into our own rootzone construction of 90 percent sand and 10 percent soil across the whole site, and the roots are very deep. We just got lucky, I guess. You would have expected it to decline by now, but that just hasn’t been the case. The challenge now is to maintain it.”


Formby Hall’s Barenbrug area manager Matt Williams says that while the results of Paul’s sowing are highly unusual he’s pleased to see the fescue in such great shape. “BAR 2 is specially formulated with 20 percent browntop bent to provide the wear tolerance that the fescues so need. There are several reasons why the bents did not establish, the most likely being sowing too deeply and thus being out-competed by the fescues. But with greens like that who’s worried!”