Recent Blackett Street Artificial Grass Installation

The idea for the project was devised by Newcastle’s Business Improvement District NE1, which organises a range of programmes to bring people into the city centre.

We were delighted to be asked to provide the artificial grass for this event. This was a huge ask to practically cover a busy street with artificial grass in the early hours of the morning for a 48-hour event that would be repeated 8 times over the coming months.

This did not put us off, and we knew we could do it, so offered our services when asked. Multiple site visits took place to make sure there would be no surprises on the day of installation. Prior to the installation starts, the whole street needed to be thoroughly cleaned to make sure that our adhesive would stick to the road and grass firmly.

This work needed to take place overnight due to the event only being on weekends, and the streets would be simply too busy with pedestrians during the day.

The road closed at 2am, and the team set about installation the huge task of installing the grass. One of the main challenges was moving the grass around as it is rare, we would be dealing with a full roll on the installation site without the support of a forklift, and a total of 11 rolls were used for this project.

We set out each roll one at a time, cutting it into shape to fit inside the curb edges. At times the width of the road fluctuates between 12 and 4 meters, so there was a lot of cutting to take place. Each piece had to be cut precisely, making sure that the 25m joins were also set, so there were no gaps.

This was going to be repeated every weekend for the 8 weekends, so we needed to be sure that the grass would fit together in the same spot each time. The rolls were labelled, and a map was drawn up, so we knew what went where each week.

Next, we had to set the joins and install the rubber edge against any open sides of our installation to prevent trip hazards.

The grass is then secured to the floor using our specialist adhesive tape, which also holds it to the rubber edge. It is checked that it has held before having pressure put on it to ensure that it is well and truly stuck down. We use a jointing bandage that is very tacky but can be removed with the force which we know will not break during the 48-hour event but can be taken off on completion.