Behind the scenes at Wimbledon: strawberries, Pimm's and 12,000 petunias

Times

4 days ago

With a week to go before the start of Europe's largest strawberry-eating festival, Joe Furber was looking relaxed despite the imminent daily challenge of feeding the 45,000. 'I hear there is also a tennis tournament going on,' said the food and drink operations manager for the Wimbledon Championships. Just a little one.
Strawberries have been part of Wimbledon since the first tournament in 1877. 'They are synonymous with the Championships,' Furber said. Forty miles away, at a farm near Maidstone, 2.5 million of them are waiting on bushes, plump and juicy, to be picked each morning, hulled, boxed and brought to southwest London by 8.30am. This year it costs £2.70 for ten of the Malling Centenary variety, 20p more than in 2010, making them one of the few things not to have suffered huge inflation.
The box and spoon are made of seaweed and are biodegradable, one of this year's innovations along with a 'frictionless larder' where you tap in with your card, take what you want and are retrospectively charged rather than having to wait in a queue to pay.
Furber and his team, including 300 chefs, also keep the masses well watered, with 300,000 glasses of Pimm's sold across the fortnight, not, as I thought, per day. Well it comes to barely six glasses each and the heat can make some of us thirsty. Perhaps the rest are on fizz.
Wimbledon is put together by a cast of thousands. I found Neil Stubley, the head of courts, studying the sky as clouds briefly blocked the sun. Being a groundsman involves looking up as well as down. 'Every time it gets dark you assume it's going to rain because it's Wimbledon,' he said. 'We have to work with whatever Mother Nature gives us but this has been a great run-in. We can always put more water on, and the grass loves direct sunshine. The problem is when you have showers and the covers are on and off.'
Centre Court has not been used since last year's finals. It was 'steam sterilised' under poly tunnels, the top shaved, the ground levelled and seeded. 'It's a brand new court every year,' he said. The first players to step on it will be Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Barbora Krejcikova on Thursday and Friday; two years ago, the club decided to allow the defending champions and world No1 players to practise on Centre and give their feedback. The same privilege is extended on No1 Court to last year's losing finalists and the British No1s, Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu.
Stubley is at his 30th Championships, his 13th in overall charge. His groundstaff of 31 prepare 18 match courts and 20 for practice. Come Monday, they will look immaculate. Another long-server is Martyn Faulkner, the head gardener, who is in his 26th year at the club and for the past six weeks has been taking deliveries of 28,000 plants for the baskets and borders.
'People come to watch the tennis but they also associate Wimbledon with flowers,' he said. The 5,000 hydrangeas and 12,000 petunias in the club livery are old favourites but he is pleased with some new white roses this year. 'We try to make an English garden feel,' he said. 'Nothing garish.'
Another trademark Wimbledon plant is the Boston ivy that has clung to the outside of Centre Court since 1922. A couple of Faulkner's team of 20 gardeners were looking anxiously at a patch that had apparently died after a truck struck its root. They decided it would be better to remove that section, paint the wall and restore it next year.
Handling sudden accidents is where Dave Tulloch, lead support services, excels. He started at the club 28 years ago, first on security, and will arrive on site every day at 7am to make sure the place is ready. One year he had to make emergency repairs after a delivery driver damaged the shop floor. Another morning, many years ago, a tree collapsed on the pavement outside the club, fortunately without causing injury, and had to be hastily removed. 'We work wonders round here,' he said.
When there are illnesses or injuries, Fenella Wrigley leads a large medical team to assist spectators and players that includes dozens of doctors, six radiologists, 40 physios and two psychologists as well as a pharmacy. The aim is to treat most concerns on site. 'We see 150 to 200 people a day and less than three or four need to go to hospital,' she said.
This year there are no line judges — the calls are automated and 'fault' will be cried by a computer in different voices to avoid confusing play on adjacent courts — but the ballboys remain, as they have since the 1920s, joined by ballgirls in 1977. Sarah Goldson looks after them, after whittling down 1,500 teenage applicants from 32 local schools to a squad of 280. The best 36 are given the two biggest courts to handle in one-hour shifts.
'They have been training with us for 2½ hours a week since January,' Goldson said. 'Rolling the ball is the toughest skill to get right but what captivates the public is the symmetry, the silence and the walking in lines. The best will know they have done a good job when they are not noticed during the match.'
Impressing people while not being noticed is almost the mantra of what goes on behind the scenes. Michelle Dite, the operations director, leads a full-time staff of 370 with 2,000 more employed for the season. They wargame problems — though she could not have foreseen a pandemic cancelling the tournament when she was appointed four days before lockdown started in 2020 — and hope for good luck. 'We don't know what we don't know,' she said. 'The place can be working perfectly and then you open the gates . . .'
And when it is over, they start planning for next year. Dite is eager to improve things like spectator flow around the complex and how the queue can be better, and is working on a strategy for 2027, the 150th anniversary, that will involve increasing capacity at the viewing area we used to call 'Henman Hill' and 'Murray Mount'.
Perhaps by then we will have another British champion and it will be known as the Draper District or Raducanu Rise. 'It would be nice,' Dite said, 'but that is one thing we can't control. That and the weather.'