As part of its mission of building communities, not just new housing developments, Orbit Homes wanted to incorporate a new full-sized football pitch into its development at Norse Road, Bedford and decided at the outset that it needed to employ a sports turf ‘design and build’ specialist to ensure that the quality of the football pitch matched the quality of its new homes.

Orbit initially approached Turfdry in July 2015, with an outline of its basic requirements that Turfdry refined and re-presented in the form of a fully costed ‘design and build package’, incorporating its unique Turfdry Drainage System and a semi-automatic irrigation system that would be needed for the proposed turfed pitch. There was very little usable topsoil on site and Turfdry was asked to try to incorporate piles of clay that had been stockpiled following excavations for the footings of all the houses on site. Turfdry uses state-of-the-art land remodelling software and, after undertaking topographical surveys of the site, managed to design a ‘balanced’ cut & fill earthworks model of the pitch sub-base, which would be topped by imported BS3882:(2015) certified topsoil.

Following the drainage installation, the pitch was turfed using 'Big Roll' turf, and was officially opened by the Mayor of Bedford on July 8th.