Sports, Golf Turfgrass Perfect for Home Lawn

Homeowners, Golf and Sports Turf Managers Find a New Bermudagrass Is More Beautiful, Drought Tolerant and Easier to Maintain

Wharton, TX - Homeowners seeking to upgrade their lawns, particularly those in areas facing water restrictions, may have cause for Celebration. That’s Celebration with a capital “C,” a proprietary variety of bermudagrass licensed to Texas sod growers through their trade association, the Turfgrass Producers of Texas (TPT). First released in 1999, it has been available in Texas since 2002.

Celebration™ Bermudagrass is equally suitable for home lawns, golf courses and athletic fields.

“Our growers are excited about it,” says John Cosper, executive director of the TPT. “It’s drought tolerant, cold tolerant, it can handle a lot of adversity and it has a good green color. It’s really catching on.”

Cosper says the deep, blue-green color of Celebration distinguishes it immediately from other bermudagrasses, even to homeowners with little or no knowledge of turfgrass characteristics.

“Celebration just stands out from all the (other) varieties,” says Cosper. His assertion is backed up by an interim report for an ongoing study being conducted by NC State University, in which Celebration is one of four bermudagrass cultivars that performed above all other cultivars in the study. And 2003 data for the 2002 independent trials of 42 varieties of bermudagrass in the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program ranked Celebration in the top third of all bermudagrass cultivars being tested, for turfgrass quality ratings.

“The first thing I do with people who are interested in bermudagrass is bring them out to the farm,” says Steve Potter, vice president of Grimes Grass in Houston, one of the licensed growers of Celebration. “They’re immediately drawn to Celebration by its color and then I tell them to take their shoes and socks off and walk on the grass. The fine texture sells them.”

The aesthetic qualities are important characteristics, but underneath the beautiful surface is a tough turfgrass plant that takes a beating, tolerates drought, tolerates more shade than other bermudagrasses and has shown good disease resistance.

Like most bermudagrasses, Celebration’s primary use has been on golf courses and athletic fields where its durability has proven to be at least as good as — if not better than — the others in the three years it has been available in Texas. This advantage is also supported by the NCSU study, showing that Celebration has demonstrated the highest wear tolerance of eight bermudagrasses involved in the study.

A grass that can withstand the daily pounding of football and soccer cleats or hundreds of rounds of golf while maintaining picture-perfect appearance can help create a beautiful landscape and a safe, durable playground and outdoor activity center.

Furthermore, Celebration is easier to install than other bermudagrasses. “Landscapers can lay a lot more sod in a day because Celebration doesn’t fall apart when they pick it up and handle it,” says TPT’s Cosper. “They don’t have to spend time patching pieces back together. They can just lay it and go on.”

Potter, of Grimes Grass, agrees. “You can actually toss the slabs from worker to worker,” he said. Furthermore, homeowners can maintain Celebration themselves with sharp rotary mowers. “We recommend they keep it down to not much higher than an inch,”

Of all the characteristics of Celebration, however, its most significant may be its drought tolerance — shared to some extent by all bermudagrasses. “We have a lot of concern in Texas about watering, and bermudagrasses are perceived by regulators to be more drought-tolerant than St. Augustinegrasses and some other species,” says TPT’s Cosper. “In San Antonio and Austin, they are recommending bermudas and as we get more restrictive, we may get even more demand for bermudagrass.”

Potter attests specifically to Celebration’s drought-tolerance with a personal story: “I installed it in my own yard,” he said. “It had sat on a pallet for seven days before I got around to laying it and it was every color BUT green. I put it down and turned on the water all night and all the next day. Completely soaked it. I watered every day for the next 10 days and it looked great. I’ve never watered it since and I don’t have an irrigation system. It still looks great.”

Potter also suggested another attribute of Celebration not normally associated with bermudagrasses — shade tolerance.

“It needs fewer hours of direct sunlight daily than other bermudagrasses,” Potter says, “and it doesn’t have to get those hours all at one time.” But, Potter also advises that, while Celebration has more shade tolerance than other bermudagrasses, it is not a ‘shade grass’. “Celebration needs adequate amounts of sunlight, but will do well with even 5-6 hours per day, on average.”

Lanse Fullinwider, manager of grounds maintenance and facilities at the University of North Texas in Denton, which has football practice fields and soccer fields with Celebration, also noted a striking instance of shade tolerance. He said a section of Celebration was covered by a 30-ft. by 40-ft. tent for a month between mid-August and mid-September. The tented area had been used as a training station for football-player injuries and got “…lots of trampling, lots of water from irrigation, misting systems and ice”… but no sun. Within two weeks in full sun, “it went from longer, shaggy, unmowed Celebration to a tight turf.”

A study at Clemson University in northwestern South Carolina confirmed indicates that Celebration’s shade tolerance is superior to that of Tifton 419 and TifSport, the two most popular varieties of bermudagrass in Texas. Together, those varieties, plus common bermudagrass, cover about 15 percent of the state’s acreage planted in turfgrass.

Cosper also noted that the developer of Celebration — Sod Solutions Inc., based near Charleston, S.C. — “highlighted a selling point themselves. We had a widespread disease outbreak near Austin that affected all grasses. Sod Solutions has a tech rep near Houston who went over to take a look and advised that they not do anything to the Celebration. People were putting fungicides on most of the grasses but Celebration recovered more quickly than the others… and without fungicides.” Good cause to celebrate.

Sod Solutions, Inc. is an international turfgrass development company. The company’s primary research facility and headquarters is in Mt. Pleasant, SC. Sod Solutions has developed and released Palmetto® St. Augustine, EMPRESS® Zoysia, EMPIRE® Zoysia, CelebrationTM Bermudagrass, and SapphireTM St. Augustine in the United States, Australia, Brazil, and South Africa. Sod Solutions is the U.S. patent holder for each of these grasses. Visit www.sodsolutions.com for more information.

For a list of Texas growers currently producing Celebration, please visit the company Web site at www.sodsolutions.com. A brochure in pdf format with more information about Celebration also is available at the site for downloading. For more information about the Turfgrass Producers of Texas, visit www.txsod.com or contact John Cosper, Executive Director, at 979.282.9305 or jcosper@wcnet.net.