Having been at Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) for nearly 40 years, John Nicholls brings a wealth of experience working all around the world as head of horticultural standards. The CWGC global estate is around 600ha with war graves in 152 countries worldwide, with horticultural operations in around 52 of those. The CWGC has reduced chemical use by approximately 90%.
He will be speaking on HortWeek's Integrated weed management: realities vs. government goals panel at GroundsFest.
Join us on September 9 in the Landscape Zone in the HortWeek seminar area at GroundsFest at 11am.
This essential event is sponsored by Kersten.
You’re on the Integrated Weed Management: realities vs. government goals panel at GroundsFest this year – why should visitors come along?
Having been to Groundsfest in recent years, my experience of it is that it is probably the most comprehensive event offering focused on the amenity horticulture sector. The range of exhibitors and the opportunities to meet the suppliers is expanding year on year.
Combining the exhibition with a festival event was inspired and makes the whole event a great business day, but also a chance to relax with music and a few beers. Me and my team will be there for sure.
How long have you worked at Commonwealth War Graves Commission and what’s your role there?
I’ve been working for the Commission for 39 years. I began working for CWGC on the 4 of August 1986, I was 20 years old and had just finished my diploma in amenity horticulture at Cannington College. My first posting was in Belgium. I lived and worked in Belgium for around six years, rising through the grades of head gardener and senior head gardener.
I then moved to France to take up the position of sector supervisor, where my responsibilities included large parts of the Somme regions and although the Champagne region of Reims and Soisson.
In 1994 I was transferred to Greece as a Regional Supervisor and lived in Thessaloniki for five years covering all of Greece and the islands, and the Balkan states of Albania, Serbia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania.
In 1999 after 13 years of continuous service overseas I returned to the UK. My role was district inspector and covered the south east counties and all of London south of the Thames. In 2001 I moved to our head office and managed all the African countries from Senegal to Chad and the Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Libya.
In 2008 until 2011 I was posted to Rome as horticultural manager for our Western Mediterranean office covering Italy, Sardegna, Tunisia, Libya Spain, Malta and Gibraltar. I then returned to our UK office as Operations Manager for all of Africa, Asia and the Pacific countries and was in that role for seven years.
My current role since 2019 as Head of Horticultural Standards is essentially a consultancy function to support the operational Area teams in delivering the quality standards we strive to achieve across the estate.
How big is the area of landscape you manage and what types of horticulture can be found within them?
Our global estate is around 600Ha. There are war graves in some 152 countries worldwide, though there are horticultural operations in around 52 of those. We have 23,000 locations which are made up of 2,000 constructed sites and thousands of smaller plots that together commemorate some 1.7 million casualties of the first and second world wars. We have around 800 gardeners.
As you’d expect with a global estate, we have an extremely diverse horticultural challenge. However the Commission’s cemeteries were designed by eminent architects of the day post WW1 such as Edwin Lutyens, Sir Reginal Blomfield and Louis de Soissons and there was a whole debate at the time of how the horticulture should balance the structural elements of the cemeteries. Gertrude Jekyll, working with the likes of Lutyens, had great influence in developing the typical layout you see in our sites to this day.
These are that most of the surface is a lawn, and the rows of headstones are enveloped by straight edged herbaceous borders. Hedges are often used to mark a boundary and ornamental features such as pergolas, and shrubberies are used in moderation.
Trees, and in some sites woodlands, are highly valued in the landscapes and we have ambitions to plant and establish 39,000 trees before 2039.
These feature, working in unison with the structures were planned to create the feeling of being in a typical British garden of the day, and to be a place for reflection and solace for those that were grieving the loss of their loved ones, or as is more common today, discovering and visiting the burial place of an ancestor.
How has your maintenance of these spaces changed over the years you’ve been there?
Of course, the essential tasks such as planting, mowing, hedge cutting, border edging, weeding etc all still need to be done, but what has changed, in some cases quite radically, is the way these tasks are delivered and the equipment we use.
Back in 1986 when I arrived in Belgium mowing was predominantly done using cylinder mowers on a 4:1 rotation with rotary mowers. We had an enormous fleet of Atco B24 Royal, Ransomes Matador and Ransomes Mastiff for the larger sites. Later on, during the 1990’s Allett mowers started to be the machine of choice, particularly the 27” Buffalo, and I think at one time we were one of Allett’s largest customers, and we exported a lot of mowers to our sites overseas. Of the rotary mowers, Hayter Harrier and Osprey were the machines of choice, and we must have had many hundreds of them during those years. There were very few ride-on machines, and they tended to be very fragile and not really up to the enormity of the task.
These days, most of the mowing is done using rotary mowers and the number of the cylinder mowers we use is a very small part of the fleet. The cylinder mowers are more prevalent in countries where warm season grasses such as Zoysia, Paspalum, Axonopus and Cynodon are used. The fleet of ride-on mowers has also increased enormously, and this has enhanced efficiency but has also brought with it spin off problems such as tramlines in the bays between headstone rows where the machine is constrained to following the same track at each mowing cycle.
As you can imagine, we have hundreds of kilometres of border edges to trim and way back in 1986 there were two methods, a pair of edging shears (you’d be surprised how much you can do in a day once you find the rhythm with a pair of decent shears) and the Bob Andrews PET (Powered Edge Trimmer). The PET was a lot quicker but did not trim as cleanly as shears and the tiny two stroke ending was incredibly unreliable, you also had to walk backwards to use it, or if you had perfected the technique you could walk forwards but that was strangely slower. Most of our small kit was two stroke – machines like the Victa Tilt-a-Cut that was used for straightening border edges in the spring, strimmers, chainsaws, brush cutters etc. Hedge trimmers were 110 volt and ran from mobile generators. Today, there is a focus on replacing as much of our two stroke equipment with battery power. Apart from some of the larger chainsaws, we believe that there are viable alternatives and we’re constantly scanning the market for good products.
Another more recent innovation is the use of autonomous mowers. We currently have a small, but growing fleet that includes machines from Husqvarna, and we have recently successfully tested a machine from Kress. These machines definitely have a place in our fleet, and whilst they are not a perfect solution, they will deliver efficiencies.
We are also taking more and more of our grassland out of routine mowing where it is feasible to do so, allowing the grassland to grow to its natural habit as a means of creating efficiencies during the busy maintenance months.
In 2018/19 we undertook a global review of our chemical and fertiliser use. The conclusion and outcome to that year-long investigation was a massive reduction in the use of synthetic fertilisers, biocides, selective herbicides and general herbicides. This has delivered a near 95% reduction in historical use of these products.
This move to a low chemical use regime and the implementation of an Integrated Pest/Weed Management approach has brought with it many challenges, but these are outweighed by the positive benefits to the biodiversity of our sites. It also aligns our approach with the requirements of many of our host countries, particularly in Europe.
Two other fundamental tasks which have changed dramatically are headstone border renovation and cleaning of the headstones and memorials.
Headstone border renovation was introduced in the mid 80’s. It installed a process whereby in 20% of the borders in each site, the planting was removed, the border was double dug, bulky organic matter such as farmyard manure was introduced, and then the border planting scheme we replanted. This was an enormous and highly labour intensive task that generally started in October and ran through to February. Thankfully, this task has now been replaced, and a no-till approach is the norm.
Border management is the plan, and plants are allowed to reach their natural size and form at maturity. Mulching with organic matter, much of it produced in-house, has proven to be as effective, if not more so than deep cultivation at improving soil health with the added benefit of less labour input and less disruption to the soil structure.
Back in the 80’s, cleaning of the headstones and memorials involved the annual spraying of biocides (Gloquat, Rhodoquat, and latterly Fungitrol TL2 – all of which are some form of quaternary ammonium chloride) onto all the structures, regardless of the level of algae etc that was present.
This was incredibly inefficient and labour intensive and although it was an effective way to manage algae and lichens that colonised the stone features, the run-off into the border planting did have a negative impact on some plants and most probably the soil. We no longer use these products and have now moved to an enzyme based product that has none of the deleterious effects of the chemicals and has shown to be as effective in managing algae etc. on the structures.
How will the effects of a changing climate change the way you maintain the green spaces in the coming years?
Climate change is having an impact across our estate, that’s a fact, and the only sure thing is that our landscapes and the methods we apply to manage them are going to have to change. For example, most of our sites in Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Egypt and Israel have permanently installed irrigation systems, and we use a lot of water to maintain the horticulture in its current format. This is not only extremely expensive but is also becoming less and less sustainable as pressure on available water resources increases in these countries.
We recognise that our landscapes need to become much more water and energy efficient and we are currently developing long term planning to modify our sites where necessary to be more sustainable. This includes the introduction of more trees to our sites to increase shade and lower evapotranspiration rates, taking some areas of turf out of regular irrigation and allowing the grasses to naturalise and by making changes to the plant species in the headstone borders, using more water efficient plants.
These and other measures are all aimed at reducing the irrigation footprint and building more climate resilience into the landscape. These changes and undoubtedly more innovative measures will need to develop over time to cope with the impact of climate change as it affects each part of our global estate.
What will not change is our perpetual and enduring commitment to deliver the highest quality of care at all the locations across our global estate as a mark of respect and thanks in commemoration of those who have gone before us and who made the ultimate sacrifice in our defence.
