I worked for a landscape company in the long time ago Boston areaAnd even though I was the type of lawn, I also helped in all other services that the company provided. This meant that I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees with my head in a hole Irrigation systems.
We have installed a lot of new residential systems, some sports fields and even an entire university campus. Most of the time we did a great job, but there were also times when we fell flat on our faces, like the time when we thought we had the expertise to renovate one Irrigation system on a golf course. The bosses sent me to fix this chaos that took me over three months.
There was a trend to move everything, but in the middle of the fact that we may have forgotten something. Our landscapes should not be designed for the need for applied water. If the plants that you install in your landscapes need a lot of irrigation just to survive, you may have selected the wrong plants. Don't get me wrong; I don't say that we should stop being irrigated. But we have to ask ourselves whether it is the smartest decision to try to breed lawn grass in a desert or palm trees on Cape cod.
In CaliforniaThe governor's office decided to solve this problem by banning the irrigation of what it describes as “non -functional lawn”. I browse this term because the entire lawn grass has functions in the landscape and in this case the term is used subjectively – it is not functional because it does not perceive the functionality, not because this lawn is objectively not functional.
In order to reduce the amount of water consumption outdoors, California began to remove a voluntary program GrassWith a bounty of up to 5 USD per square foot. But as we have experienced with many other political issues in the past, ideas are not provided. They migrate. In Colorado, the voluntary aspect of lawn removal moved into the area that was mandatory, whereby the state prohibited the irrigation of “non -functional lawn grass”, but uses voluntary California regulations as inspiration for their politics. This idea of ”non -functional lawn” is overloaded like a running fire.
As a result, there is no recognition of incredible progress that lawn grass breeders have achieved in the development of drought -resistant varieties. I know that I choose drought resistance on my own lawn and although I don't have an irrigation system and currently in the middle of what that is National Dürre Middle Ministering Center As a “moderate drought”, my lawn refers to acceptable green. Type of. I think it is acceptable if you include “Brown” in your definition of green.
If you look at the expectation of green under some with the rejection of Brown, do you wonder if someone complains when trees rest for winter? I don't remember my office phone, which heralded complaints about it in autumn. The calm in lawn grass is a completely natural physiological process that protects the plant from death. We can plan short -term drought by carrying out the best management practices such as mowing at the upper end of the recommended height of the cut, the right fertilization and, when we are irrigated, rarely and deep and low.
Above all, I think that it is hard to educate our customers that Brown is perfectly fine in the middle of summer when it is hot and dry outside. Hug the brown, as I like to say.
Unfortunately I did not foreseen this problem at all. As an industry, we have to recognize what I consider as always increased calls to limit or eliminate the irrigation of our landscapes. In any case, do not use a lawn grass in areas such as traffic islands in which it is almost impossible to keep it alive, but we do not throw the baby out with the irrigation water (whoa … that was bad. I'm so sorry) and remove the wholesale of the lawn grass.