For decades, GREEN-CONSULT has been the engineering firm par excellence for grass riding arenas around the world and in all climates. Our technical expertise was immediately recognized by the Blazquez family and their famous Sunshine Tour in Montenmedio, where our arena made the reputation of the competition and vice versa. Here we’ve built arenas on natural earth, on existing sand arenas and on Ebb & Flow arenas.
The natural soil arena could be considered the simplest, but it’s always difficult to achieve, and it’s also always different from place to place (including on the same site), both chemically and physically. On the basis of analyses, using corrective products and materials, we modify the compositions to arrive at the optimum we know, to maintain a turf mix also custom-made with the best grass varieties.
The arena on an existing sand arena is our specialty. One of the best-known examples is the Longines Tops International Arena in Valkenswaard (NL), where turf was installed over the existing fibrous sand arena without replacing a single grain of sand. Once again, on the basis of our analyses, we modified the physico-chemical composition of the soil in place, added bacteria and fungi to give life to the sterile ground and sowed a mixture of grasses that met the specific requirements of the “artificial soil” and climate.
In addition to the existing sand arena, we install turf on existing Ebb & Flow arena surfaces, as was recently the case at the Brussels Rolex Masters in Meise (B). These arenas have the enormous advantage of being able to eliminate large quantities of water in a short space of time, so as to maintain a good structure in the event of heavy rain.
Installing grass on such an arena poses a number of challenges, because, like the sand arena, the ground is unnatural and therefore lifeless. Microbial life must be inoculated to keep the turf alive. But microbial life is extremely difficult to maintain, because the water in the pond destroys useful bacteria and fungi and encourages the development of micro-organisms that rot the ground and kill the roots.
With over 10 years’ experience in this type of arena, we’re the only ones to offer so many references of successful arena systems.
Regardless of the type of arena selected, it’s really the maintenance techniques implemented in our programs that enable us to present high-quality arena systems. We offer all our customers tailor-made programs and ongoing technical support.
