By Matthew Young
Grass chiefs at Wimbledon have figured out an ingenious way to make water 鈥榳etter鈥 – to keep down soaring bills. As water bills rise across the country, SW19, despite its ample funds, is also counting the pennies. Across England and Wales, as of April, water bills were due to rise on average of 拢10 per month. And Head of Horticulture at the All England Club, Neil Stubley, said the grounds were 鈥榓bsolutely鈥 feeling the pinch. So water gurus at the Championships have been working on ways to better conserve water. 鈥淲e have a wetting agent program,鈥 he said. 鈥淲hich essentially is something that we can spray into the soil. It sounds a weird term, but it makes water wetter. 鈥淪o the surface tension of a water molecule, a plant root system, at a certain point, can鈥檛 penetrate it as the moisture gets smaller, because the surface tension鈥檚 more. We can adjust that so that actually a plant root can tap into that water. So when you think the soil is really, really dry, our grasses can still get water that鈥檚 maybe not available to (other plants).” Asked if that was to keep water bills down, he said: 鈥淎bsolutely. We don鈥檛 want to be using water if we don鈥檛 need to be using it. So if we can use the least amount, and rely on Mother Nature outside of the Championships for the grass court season, then we will. 鈥淚f we feel that because of the Championships, because we鈥檝e got exact numbers and criteria that we want to stick to, we have to make sure that our target irrigation is absolutely spot on. So some days it will be less, more, it will never be an exact science.鈥 He jokingly added he did not have to pay the bills, so wasn鈥檛 sure how much they had increased at the championships. Stubley referred to a predicted drought in 2012, which changed the types of plants his team of 20 now plant around the grounds, despite there being plenty of rain by the time of the tournament. 鈥淥n the back of that, we actually made a conscious effort that the hydrangeas 鈥 and those types of flowers we鈥檝e used historically here that actually do need a lot of water to survive 鈥 if you look at the grounds over the last 10 to 15 years, although they鈥檙e still in areas, there鈥檚 a lot less of them.鈥 He added, 鈥淎ll the research that we do with our grasses, we鈥檙e now selecting grasses that are more wear-tolerant, more drought-tolerant grasses that we can use in the UK that have been used elsewhere.鈥 After a scorching opening two days at the Championships, temperatures have dropped by around 10C today and much-needed rain this morning prompted queues at the official shop, where 拢40 umbrellas were selling at speed.