“Excellent, excellent, excellent!” Those were the opening remarks from Andrew Bretherton, Estates Manager at Abberley Independent Prep School, when asked about the service and product back-up from Tallis Amos Group (TAG).
Abberley Hall School is a coeducational preparatory day and boarding school with around 160 pupils, aged between 2 - 13 years. It’s located on 90 hectares of beautiful rural landscape in between Worcester and Tenbury close to the village of Abberley, Worcestershire.
“We have a wide variety of grounds maintenance projects to cater for,” commented Andrew Bretherton, “Not only do we have a lot of sports fields, cricket squares and gardens, but also amenities and parkland around the estate. Some of the machinery we use is becoming dated and unreliable, so recently we decided on looking at a multi-purpose mower that would work well in a wide variety of applications. We looked at lots of options, had previous experience with Kubota products and had some demonstrations of other brands. The TAG team from Leominster, brought out their John Deere 9009A terrain cut mower, showed us how to use it and then left it with us. Phil Taylor, TAG’s Area Sales Manager, told me to try it out in my own time and see how it fitted my requirements. I really liked that approach, it wasn’t a hard sell and it gave me time to see what it could do, without being pressured. I was really impressed!”
Following the demonstration, Abberley decided on adding the John Deere 9009A to the fleet. It is a multipurpose mower, powered by a 55hp engine, with five independent rotary decks which follow the undulations of the terrain, virtually eliminating any scalping. Cut width is 2.74metres and height of cut is variable from just 1.9cm (3/4inch) to 10.2cm (4 inches) in 0.64cm (1/4inch) increments. “The John Deere leaves an absolutely beautiful cut,” enthused Andrew, “no matter where we are using it and it is so easy to operate, it is very user friendly. Even on some of the banks, where we might not have been able to mow before, the John Deere takes it all in its stride because it has four-wheel-drive, we can go almost anywhere without it being a problem. You just put your foot down and go!
“TAG really have been responsive and prompt with their sales and product support and what’s even better is that we have a Dennis cylinder mower which we use for the cricket green and it’s years old now. TAG is the local dealer for Dennis products and so they are very experienced in being able to take on the servicing and parts back-up of this excellent piece of kit as and when we need it. What I’m finding with TAG is that they have a great range of brands in their portfolio, have a great team of talented people who really care about their customers and it’s become a perfect working relationship. And I can’t really ask for any more, they really are excellent, excellent, excellent!”
