At Centurion Club in St Albans, course manager Andy Garland knows every inch of the golf course because he helped build it from the ground up. Today, as the club continues to host some of the biggest events in professional golf, Garland relies on Eurograss Dual Use grass seed mixture to help maintain consistent playing surfaces throughout the year in increasingly challenging weather conditions.
Garland joined the club in 2006 during the construction phase and has remained at the heart of the venue ever since, overseeing its development into one of the UK’s most recognised tournament golf destinations.
“We spent the best part of five years shaping it, designing it, topsoiling it and growing it from seed,” he said. “I’ve walked every mile here and every part of the course; I know it like the back of my hand.”
Garland leads a team of 12 full-time greenkeepers, with numbers doubling during tournament preparation weeks. Managing a modern, in-demand venue means constantly adapting to evolving weather patterns and changing turf pressures; something that has also influenced his approach to grass seed selection.
“When I started my career, you probably wouldn’t have a mower out from November until April,” he said. “Now we’re mowing all year round because of the mild weather. We get a month’s rainfall in a day and then go months without rain.”
As a result, drought tolerance, wear tolerance and recovery have become increasingly important factors when selecting seed mixtures.
“We’re still using similar species, but now they’re better cultivars,” Garland explained. “The breeding and seed technology has come a long way. We’re looking for drought resistance, wear tolerance, colour and grasses that can cope with being cut lower and put under more pressure.”
That search for improved performance led the club to trial the Eurograss Dual Use mixture, supplied through Turfcare and recommended partly due to its strong STRI rankings. Initially introduced for repairs and divoting work on tees and fairways, the results quickly caught Garland’s attention.
“I was very pleased with Dual Use and how it worked,” he said. “It helped recover divots quicker and even in droughty conditions on non-irrigated areas.”
Eurograss Dual Use is a hard-wearing amenity grass seed mixture designed for areas that need to look good while coping with regular use and changing weather conditions. Combining high-quality perennial ryegrasses with strong creeping red fescues, it delivers excellent wear tolerance, strong recovery and impressive drought resilience.
Following the initial success, Garland expanded its use across the golf course as part of Centurion’s wider overseeding programme.
“We overseed twice a year, normally about four-and-a-half tonnes in the spring and the same again in the autumn,” he said. “Now we use it wall-to-wall on tees, fairways, aprons, collars and even semi-rough areas.”
One particular overseeding programme in spring 2025 reinforced Garland’s confidence in the mixture.
“We had a very dry spring after overseeding,” he explained. “What really sold the Eurograss seed to me was when we finally got some water down on the drill runs four-to-six weeks later, the strike rate was really impressive. The plant, once it had germinated, was very tolerant to droughty conditions and it performed very well.”
Garland has also been impressed with the seed’s cold germination capabilities during autumn and winter use.
“We divot all year round using the product,” he said. “Even through winter, if you get a two-week window of mild weather, you can see the grass striking and germinating again. It ticks every box for me in regard to drought tolerance, wear tolerance and cold germination.”
For Garland, consistency and reliability are critical when purchasing between eight and nine tonnes of seed annually.
“When you’re buying that amount of seed, you need confidence in what you’re putting out there,” he said. “I’ve seen competitors germinate, but nowhere near as well as the Eurograss products I’ve used. As a greenkeeper, that’s all you can ask for. You know every bag is going to work and that’s one less thing you’ve got to worry about when managing a golf course.”
DSV has been established in the UK for over 40 years with an exemplary track record of providing the best seed for many popular agricultural crops including oilseed rape, grasses, winter wheat, barley, maize, cover crops, lupins and linseed.
Part of an international plant breeder based in Germany and with subsidiaries across the world, DSV UK operates from it breeding and trials centre at Wardington in Oxfordshire comprising of around 50ha of land used to breed winter wheat and forages and for National List trials of wheat and grass.