America’s children are getting increasingly less outdoor exercise, studies show. This problem, which contributes to childhood illnesses and obesity, is made worse with the approach of winter snow and ice. As the temperatures drop and snow moves in, traditional play areas of gravel, dirt and sod play simply become unusable.

The use of NewGrass® to create year-round play areas is one way families and schools from coast to coast have directly and successfully addressed the challenge of getting kids moving outside.

“We’ve had great success with NewGrass® on all kinds and sizes of play areas and in all kinds of climates and weather conditions,” says Gregory Goehner, President of NewGrass, the artificial grass of choice when water conservation and being environmentally and eco-friendly are as important as having more green lawn to enjoy in any season.

A play area covered in NewGrass®, for example, is usable even after a snowfall, because it’s installed in a way that lets water simply drain through.

Installing NewGrass® in backyard play areas, school playgrounds and other settings is one way to act on the recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics earlier this year that children under five play outside as much as possible.

“Today’s children are four times less active in their day-to-day lives than their grandparents were,” the AAP report says. “That kind of statistic is troubling and calls for some parental intervention.”

A recent study published in the online JAMA Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine meanwhile found that nearly half of all U.S. preschoolers don’t even have one chance each day to play outdoors under a parent’s supervision.

“Preschool age children should get at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day,” says the report’s author, Pooja Tandon, MD, MPH, of Seattle Children’s Research Institute. “But many preschoolers are not meeting that recommendation. Young children need more opportunities to play outdoors and to help them be more active.”

“NewGrass® is an eco-friendly, natural-looking and incredibly safe alternative to any other kind of surface under our play sets,” Goehner said. “It eliminates the kind of injuries a child can suffer from a fall on gravel, sand or dirt. We’re also very big on the fact that NewGrass® is lead-safe.”

Sand and wood chips create cushioned surfaces, but both are messy, scatter easily, routinely need to be replenished and are unusable after a snowfall or heavy rain. Perhaps least appealing of all, sand and wood chips can attract cats, who consider these coverings to be one big litter box.

Turf grass and its weeds can aggravate allergies, plus they require fertilizers, pesticides, watering and maintenance. NewGrass® is hypo-allergenic, doesn’t stain clothes and prevents dirt and mud from being tracked inside.

Sometimes things just naturally fit together: peanut butter and jelly, soup and sandwich, NewGrass and backyard play sets. Just ask Paul Parker, who is equally comfortable in the worlds of synthetic lawn and children’s play sets.

Paul is a partner in Artificial Grass San Diego and San Diego Backyard Adventures. The first is among the newest authorized distributors of NewGrass, the artificial grass solution when being water-wise and eco-friendly are as important as having more green lawn to enjoy year-round. The second company is the San Diego area’s most recognized and respected provider of the highest quality wooden outdoor play equipment.

“NewGrass has built an outstanding reputation for providing the perfect environment for play areas at schools and day care centers, and Backyard Adventures has personalized, experienced service to help any family choose the right play set, fort or swing,” Parker said. “Putting the two together just makes sense – a customer can have their home play area redesigned and recreated literally from the ground up.”

But even considered separately, it’s clear that NewGrass is superior to traditional natural products, including grass, sand and wood chips, for ground cover under and around play areas, Parker said.

“NewGrass is an eco-friendly, natural-looking and incredibly safe alternative to any other kind of surface under our play sets,” Parker said. “It eliminates the kind of injuries a child can suffer from a fall on gravel, sand or dirt. “We’re also very big on the fact that NewGrass® is lead-safe.”

Sand and wood chips create cushioned surfaces, but both are messy, scatter easily and routinely need to be replenished. Perhaps least appealing of all, sand and wood chips can attract cats, who consider these coverings to be one big litter box.

Turf grass and its weeds can aggravate allergies, plus they need fertilizers, pesticides, watering and maintenance. NewGrass is hypo-allergenic, doesn’t stain clothes and prevents dirt and mud from being tracked inside.

When it comes to considering the perfect ground covering for your children’s play set, NewGrass® artificial grass is the optimal choice. These synthetic lawns are lead-safe, hypo-allergenic, don’t stain clothes, prevent dirt and mud from being tracked inside, and eliminate the kind of injuries that a fall on gravel, sand or dirt can cause.

Day care centers, elementary schools and outdoor play equipment companies agree, and for all of the same reasons.

In fact, NewGrass® is the waterless grass of choice of Backyard Adventures of San Diego and Phoenix, arguably the nation’s premier outdoor play equipment company, with showrooms in Phoenix, Ariz., and in San Diego and San Marcos, Calif.

“NewGrass® is an eco-friendly, natural-looking and incredibly safe alternative to any other kind of surface under our play sets,” said Paul Parker, president of Backyard Adventures, at his flagship showroom in San Diego.

“We’re also very big on the fact that NewGrass® is lead-safe, and provides really great performance and safety under our play sets,” Parker added.

As a ground cover for play areas, NewGrass® is superior to traditional natural products, including grass, sand and wood chips, Parker said.

Turf grass and its weeds can aggravate allergies, plus they need fertilizers, pesticides, watering and maintenance.

Sand and wood chips create cushioned surfaces, but both are messy, scatter easily and routinely need to be replenished. Perhaps least appealing of all, sand and wood chips can attract cats, who consider these coverings to be one big litter box.

TEMPE, Ariz. – NewGrass™ has made a world of difference at a school for youngsters with special needs, and hefty donations of materials and labor made it all possible.

“Not only has it helped the children, it’s given us a whole new teaching area – outdoors on a nice lawn,” said Patty McCartney, director of Play ABA/Chrysalis Academy, in Tempe, Ariz. “The kids and teachers just love it. We’ve been doing a lot of the group activities outside. It’s opened up a new space for us. It’s given us an outdoor learning space.”

The bulk of the cost of the NewGrass™ installation was donated through the efforts of a school parent who is the operations director for a NewGrass™ distributor, STC (Synthetic Turf Company) of Scottsdale.

Play ABA/Chrysalis enrolls children in kindergarten through fourth grade who have social, language and behavioral deficits. These can include autism and other conditions that create problems related to tactile stimulation and reactions to certain environmental surroundings.

Playgrounds composed of dirt or lose ground coverings, such as bark or rocks, can pose considerable problems for these children. McCartney said many of her students would continually put the playground material in their mouths. Children with autism and other conditions are prone to do that even though they are at an age when other children have learned not to.

Natural turf grasses pose another problem as well. Many special needs children suffer more than normal from allergies. Play ABA/Chrysalis suffered from both challenges. They couldn’t grow grass because of the hot climate, poor drainage and tough soil. And the little grass they could maintain caused allergic reactions.
The school’s new artificial lawn has solved those problems and provided the unexpected benefit of adding an outdoor teaching are as well, said McCartney said.
Chris Harlien, operations director for STC (Synthetic Turf Company) of Scottsdale, was responsible for arranging the work to do the actual installation and the materials for the base and in-fill to landscape 1,450-square-foot play area at the 24-student academy.

Harlien’s daughter, Presley, is autistic and began attending Play ABA/Chrysalis this fall. When Harlien first visited the school, the surface of its play area was a combination of the dismal remains of traditional sod grass that had failed to thrive, a ground covering of bark chips, and even the deposits of an earlier attempt to apply a cover of rock and chipped rubber.

Harlien said the school approached him about the feasibility of synthetic lawn, when they learned he sold it for a living. The school knew a synthetic lawn would be a major improvement, but it didn’t have the money to buy one, McCartney said.
Harlien arranged for three of STC’s vendors to provide the backing and infill material for the installation. Harlien and a couple of friends installed the yard. The school paid for the cost of the NewGrass™.

The bottom line: Play ABA/Chrysalis got a $9,700 synthetic grass play area for $3,000.

Rockmart Landscaping Materials, in Chandler, donated nine tons of aggregate stone for the base material, said Tracy Stafford, assistant to the vice president of Rockmart.

For the installation’s infill, CRM of America donated 2,000 pounds of rubber crumbs and Atko Building Materials donated 4,000 pounds of sand.

“We’re thrilled with the result,” McCartney said. “The surface is ideal. If we move into a bigger space, we would definitely install this from the beginning.”

Elementary school principal Laurie Ocampo loved the sweeping green expanse of NewGrass™ that was installed at her school this summer, replacing the schoolyard’s 11,000 square feet of former dirt and sparse, constantly dying grass.

But Ocampo knew the true test for the synthetic grass schoolyard at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School in Casa Grande, Ariz., would be how it held up to the school’s 340 students when they returned from summer break.

“It’s great,” Ocampo said recently. “It looks so nice. It seems to be holding up well, and the kids seem to really like it.”

The 11,000-square-foot NewGrass™ installation is also helping keep the school’s hallways and classrooms clean, she said.

“Before, we always had dust and dirt coming in, just because the schoolyard was so bare,” she said.

Worse, because the terrain has high and low elevations, the kids ended up tracking mud into the school whenever it rained or if the yard was still wet after the school had watered the bare patches of natural turf that it had tried to maintain before NewGrass™.

“That’s just not a problem now,” Ocampo said. “We like it a lot.”

More than 500,000 children a year are injured on playground equipment, according to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons.

About 150,000 of these injuries are considered serious, with an average of 15 children dying each year in playground accidents.

Three-fourths of playground injuries are attributed to falls, so choosing an appropriate surface is the most important playground decision that school officials will make. Obviously, the same is true when considering a surface for a play area at home. In fact, about one-fourth of all serious playground injuries occur in the backyard, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Children typically fall off of monkey bars, swings, climbers and slides. Surprisingly, children are more likely to be seriously injured on playground equipment than they are in bicycle or car accidents.

The Consumer Federation of America, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., wants more stringent federal standards for playgrounds that include requiring up to a foot of sand, wood chips or other cushioning material under all playground equipment.

Synthetic lawns generally have a backing of rubber or a similar material. NewGrass™, a leading artificial grass, has a primary backing layer of urethane and a secondary backing of polypropylene.

Combined with their durability and being “live” all year long, artificial grasses are becoming popular alternatives for many schoolyards. This is especially true where natural grass simply can’t grow in playground areas or has been worn down to the dirt through repeated use. NewGrass™, a top-quality synthetic grass, is installed with a layer of fine sand within and under the blades. This has the practical effect of keeping the blades lifted and looking fresh. On a play area or schoolyard, it has the added advantage of providing another level of cushioning.

Another playground culprit is the dust and dirt that a typical schoolyard can create, especially if its natural grass has been worn down. Ironically, a schoolyard with natural turf can also spawn allergens.

Itchy eyes and nose, nasal discharge, blocked nasal passages, sinus headache, sneezing, wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath are all symptoms of allergies caused by dust, mold, pollen, grass and trees.

Allergies have no cure. Prevention is the only course of action – trying to eliminate or minimize a child’s exposure to allergens. Another option obviously is synthetic grass. NewGrass™, for example, has fibers that are broadloom-tufted from high-quality polyethylene or a combination of polyethylene and nylon. Neither component is considered an allergen. In addition, NewGrass™ is there for the kids to play on year-round.

The Dobson Academy, in Chandler, Ariz. , chose NewGrass™ for several of its common and recreation areas for all of these reasons, officials said. They felt that the synthetic grass option was simply more practical, particularly in the dry desert climate and topography that was very unfriendly to natural grass.

The Arizona State University Children’s Campus Center, in Tempe, had NewGrass™ installed for similar reasons: the safety and health of the children they care for every day.