How Berkhamsted School deals with a 500-year-old leaf collection issue

By Alistair March 4, 2018 05:49 Updated

Head groundsman, Mike Herring, of Berkhamsted School, and his team, have their work cut out maintaining over 40 acres of grounds and sports facilities over six schools, on five different sites, across Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Founded by the then Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1541, the school has a rich history in offering quality education and care for children up to 18 years old. Equally, for many years Trilo equipment has become renowned for making light work of fallen leaves – collecting them whilst keeping surface disruption to a minimum.

“We offer facilities for a range of both winter and summer sports – rugby, football, cricket, athletics and lacrosse play a big part in the curricular and extra-curricular life of our students” explains Mike, who has worked at Berkhamsted School for 38 years.

“Across the sites, the number of mature trees pose us problems at certain times of the year, so we looked at various options to make the job of leaf collection easier and more efficient.”

Having read up about the Trilo range of blowers and collectors, as well as seeing them at trade shows, Mike had a demonstration of a BL960 and S4 in the summer of 2017.

“I was instantly impressed with the build quality of the machines, they’re well engineered and straight forward to operate and both perform very well. Having taken delivery of the units in September, they were straight out into the field for a busy autumn. One of our sites is completely surrounded by trees so we got out with the BL960 to blow the leaves to the perimeter of the pitches before using the S4 to collect them in one or two passes. This saves us driving a heavier unit across a surface multiple times thereby causing issues with compaction and drainage.”

Throughout the process, support was provided by Jeremy Vincent of Trilo as well as Mark House from local dealer Ernest Doe. “All the help we’ve had from Jeremy, right through from demonstration to installation, has been excellent – everything was explained fully and the training was thorough. We also have the benefit of back up support from Ernest Doe which for us as a small team is invaluable.”