SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/517437
50 SportsTurf | June 2015 www.sportsturfonline.com Q&A with Pamela Sherratt I did my first Extension visit to an off-leash dog park this spring and I'm certain it won't be the last. Since the first dog park opened in Berkeley, CA in 1979, this segment of the turf management industry has exploded. In fact the fastest growing urban parks are now for dogs. A 2010 study by Trust for Public Land reported a 34% increase in off-leash dog parks in 5 years, compared to just 3% growth for parks overall. Here in Columbus, the City Parks and Rec Department have developed five large dog parks in the past 5 years. These statistics are almost certainly going to increase if you consider that 80% of Americans live in an urban environment and the population of metro area dwellers will grow by 32% over the next 3 decades. Couple that with the fact that the Humane Society states that 47% of house- holds have at least one dog, and usually more. And so with dog parks becoming such a big part of the urban environment, sports turf managers are going to be adding another layer of expertise to their resume. Challenges of maintaining a dog park are similar to any high-traffic urban green space; soil compaction, sufficient time to renovate, and good public communication. Non-turf aspects to the job includes dealing with pet waste, well-planned fencing (wide enough for turf maintenance equipment to get through but sturdy enough to contain off-leash dogs), instal- lation of water hydrants, providing shade with screens or trees, and managing hard-to-mow corners and very high traffic areas (like entrances) with hard landscaping materials or artificial turf. There is a good deal of information available on all of these top- ics but not much from a turf maintenance perspective. In fact an Internet search results in very little, if any, mention of turf main- tenance at dogs parks. The dog park I visited had been well planned with two large grassed areas, each just over 1 acre in size, and each surrounded by good quality fencing. There was also water at the park, both for the dogs and for landscape irrigation. Having two separate areas (paddocks) means that the sports turf manager can adopt a two-paddock approach to turf maintenance. The plan is to open each paddock to the dogs for 30 days and then renovate for 30 days while the other paddock gets opened. Thirty days was picked as the ideal renovation time because it is possible to get perennial ryegrass established and "play-ready" in that period of time. In the 30-day renovation period, each paddock is solid tined, seeded with perennial ryegrass, fertilized and irrigated. On-site bulletin boards and social media could be used to inform the park users of the two-paddock program and to seek buy-in. In this particular instance the dog park is closed during winter, since the grass is not growing and the ground is frozen. From a turf-maintenance perspective the most important challenge is soil compaction and poor drainage, which would need addressing regularly through grading, filling in holes (dogs like to dig, a lot) and soil aeration. Ideally, turfgrasses that are extremely hard-wearing, like Kentucky-31 tall fescue, turf-type tall fescue, and perennial ryegrass would be the grasses of choice HAS YOUR TURF GONE TO THE DOGS? Questions? Send them to 202 Kottman Hall, 2001 Coffey Road, Columbus, OH 43210 or sherratt.1@osu.edu Or, send them to Grady Miller at North Carolina State University, Box 7620, Raleigh, NC 27695-7620, or email grady_miller@ncsu.edu Continued on page 49 Thirty days was picked as the ideal renovation time because it is possible to get perennial ryegrass established and "play-ready" in that period of time.