The wooded, rolling countryside in which Northwood Golf Club is set makes it the perfect location for the par 71, 18-Hole course.

Because of the substantial parkland the course is set on, there is a fair amount of tree maintenanceto be done. This would involve hiring a chipper during the month of January, however, over the hire period they had to still carry out other jobs so part of the time it would lie idle - "not a sensible thing," said Wes Walker, Course Manager.

Tree work was needed outside of the hire period when they would use a trailer and burn all the waste. This would nearly always be an extremely time consuming job - "not a sensible thing," said Wes again.

After consulting a 'chipper' owning friend, who showed how he managed to fly through treework, Wes decided the club needed to buy one. Jon Ryan at Browns brought a GreenMech Eco150 TMP to demo and within 10 minutes Wes and 3 members of the committee decided they had to have one!

"Because we're not doing any major tree surgery it's perfect for all our work - we use it all year-round," Wes said. "It's easy to take to site for clearing holly or managing woodland areas. Until we purchased the Eco150 TMP some areas just didn't get touched. For example, we have a bank that stretches 300m long and 50m wide in some places. We went along the whole length of it with the chipper leaving just the trees standing - the view from the clubhouse, and the whole appearance of the course, has been transformed.


The transformed 15th hole at Northwood Golf Club before (above) and after (below)


"It's also transforming play. On a small par 3 hole there was a tiny gap where you could just play a golf shot through. We've now cleared away the holly and brash and the whole shot from the tee is now possible - it's transformed the play for that hole."

One aspect of the purchase has been the very positive attitude of the members. The quality and speed of the greens may be one thing, but the pleasing appearance of the whole course is regularly commented on.