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: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/605094
www.stma.org December 2015 | SportsTurf 23 try and knowing their work," says Wagner. He believes the marketing deliverables provided by his company are anything but a sideline; on the contrary, he sees business-to-business marketing as one of Sod Solutions' highest value-adds for its customers. Wagner states flatly that he believes the synthetic turf "has peaked" and he's confident Americans will continue to want natural grass in their landscapes. He may be wrong about any topping out of the artificial grass market, but he's almost cer- tainly right about the country's attachment to its lawns: In a May 2015 Harris Poll sponsored by the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP), the trade association reported that nine out of 10 people surveyed said they would "prefer to live in a home surrounded by trees, grass and other living plants." Respondents also gave high marks to natural green spaces on corporate campuses and government sites. Like NALP's membership, both Wagner and Lanfranco are aware the use of natural turf is an issue on which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has chimed in years ago, in fact, through its voluntary WaterSense program. And in California and some other areas of the desert Southwest, no one disputes that water conservation is imperative. How could they? The 4-year-old drought there gives every indication of stretching into five. Several people interviewed in the San Diego area during the last 2 days of July came around in different ways to saying Californians are simultaneously hopeful and apprehensive about the prospect of an El Niño late this year or early in 2016; hopeful it will bring rain aplenty and especially mountain snow this winter, apprehensive about mudslides, flooding or lightning-ignited fires. For Wagner, the case for natural grass is a slam dunk, yet he makes it as if he's standing on the floor of the US Senate: "One of the things the healthiest cities in this country have in com- mon is an abundance of natural landscaping," he says. "Are we going to go the route of plastic shrubs, plastic trees?" Lanfranco, to be sure, is equally prepared to make the case for synthetic turf in landscapes. And as you'd expect, his argu- ments alternate between water conservation and reduced maintenance costs. But make no mistake: He's also a salesman who believes in his product. Today, Lanfranco says, the quality and reliability of synthetic grass, coupled with the remarkable improvements in the aesthetics of the best products, have reached a level at which "it just makes sense," whether in commercial and residential applications or on school playgrounds, roadway medians and other government sites. Lanfranco readily acknowledges that the artificial turf market