Fort Worth, TX. – Professional photographers from coast to coast say that NewGrass® artificial lawn is the perfect choice for an easy-to-use, no muss, no fuss, natural-looking outdoor setting in the studio year-round.

Commercial portrait studios as far apart as Rhode Island and California, and stylists with Neiman Marcus and JC Penney, have chosen NewGrass® for their studio work.

“It’s great stuff for photography, and I’ve tried a lot of different options,” said Jeffrey Alexander, whose Alexander Imaging in San Francisco specializes in children’s portraits.

NewGrass® is often chosen over natural turf because in most regions of the country, photographers simply don’t have access to a dependable supply of soft, green sod grass in the middle of winter.

“I’m shooting portraits for Easter and spring now, in the middle of winter,” Alexander said. ”I need something that looked fairly real. soft, lifelike, and green.”

Sometimes, NewGrass® is the preferred choice after photographers have tried other artificial materials, including other kinds of synthetic grass. Alexander said that theatrical grass, for example, looked too fake in close-up photography.

Then there’s the ease of handling NewGrass compared with natural sod for studio photographers. It doesn’t require the water, trimming and maintenance of sod grass under the harsh lights of a studio. It’s stays looking fresh longer than natural grass and it’s easier to “fluff” during a shoot than natural grass, and you can pick it up and store it.

Jay Williams, a stylist for Neiman Marcus in Dallas, needed green grass for a spring-themed children’s clothing shoot recently. He found NewGrass through an Internet search.

“It worked out great.” Williams said. “I needed something quick. First, NewGrass was able to get me the product right away. We pitched tents on top of it. We had a great time. It was a hit.”

“Now,” he said, “it’s rolled up and in my garage. Easy.”

NewGrass™ continues to gain North America media attention as representative of the leading edge of today’s synthetic lawn industry.

Newspapers in Arizona, Tennessee, California, Texas, Virgina, New York, Massachusetts, Alabama, Georgia, and Toronto, Canada, have picked up and published a recent Associated Press article written by Dean Fosdick that focused specifically on NewGrass™ for families looking for alternatives to natural turf.

Upcoming articles are also in the development stage at other print and online publications; more about those when they appear.

Here is a copy of Fosdick’s article.

By DEAN FOSDICK
FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Homeowners who threaten to pave over their lawns to escape time-consuming mowing and weeding chores aren’t just joking anymore.

Families are increasingly replacing or reducing the size of their thirsty, turf-covered yards by “hardscaping” or substituting a variety of non-plant materials.

Hardscaping can include installing such things as walkways, retaining walls, patios, built-in barbecue grills, fences, hot tubs, swimming pools and ponds. Low-maintenance materials like stone, concrete, crushed rock or shredded bark are the materials of choice. Anything but grass.

Busy lifestyles and the desire to recharge in garden rooms or on decks rather than spend precious leisure time manicuring and shaping lawns are helping drive the trend.

Lawn and garden sales have been trending downward over the past few years, while hardscaping sales are up, the National Gardening Association says.

But if you’re not a fan of rock collecting or looking at inorganic yard clutter, you don’t have to face a garden shorn of the green grassy look. There’s always artificial turf.

The artificial turf developed for backyard use isn’t the synthetic stuff of athletic fields, however. “The blades are significantly shorter. It’s like a manicured lawn,” said Trevor Brooks, executive vice president, marketing, for NewGrass in Scottsdale, Ariz., one such product.

“The market is growing exponentially,” said Brooks, whose company began operations just a few years ago. “Our biggest (sales) area is in the Southwest but we also are getting a lot of interest in the New York area. Water conservation is a major issue. It also makes more sense to use it in shaded areas and places hard to get to with real grass.

“It’s a little more expensive upfront,” Brooks said. “But there’s no maintenance. No water costs. You don’t have to mow the lawn. In the long run, the (artificial) grass pays for itself in three years. There’s also a manufacturer’s warranty on color fade,” he said. “It won’t show any wear and tear.”

Like many such synthetic products, NewGrass comes in several different varieties. The NewGrass blades are made primarily from polyethylene, the same compound found in everyday plastic water bottles. It is marketed in three varieties: premium-quality rye, which sells for $4.99 per square foot; the monofilament fescue which is priced at $3.99; and the broadloom tufted synthetic “sport” with a taller, 2-inch pile height, that sells for $3.79.

Artificial turfs provide greenery year-round and they are free of weeds, turf dust and the allergens they can cause. “Back yard to school yard, the right choice for any application,” NewGrass says on its Web site.

“Around here (Southwest), you’re beginning to see a lot of xeriscaping - people making over their front yards with rocks and drought-resistant plants,” Brooks said. “But a lot of people from our Phoenix area came originally from somewhere else. They’re used to lawns but they want an easy-care alternative.”

Some people may scoff at the idea of putting down artificial turf, but it’s a beautiful, beneficial alternative to real lawns, Brooks said.

“Ours looks so real I’ve had people come up to me and ask how much water it needs.”

PHOENIX, Ariz. – Thanks to NewGrass™, one upscale pet resort can keep its sprawling expanse of outdoor lawn sanitized without worrying about killing it.

“We use hospital-grade disinfectant, and we use a lot of it now that we have NewGrass™,” said Melissa Lidberg, an owner of Boulder Falls Pet Resort in west Phoenix. “The disinfectant has no effect on the new lawn at all,”

Before it installed NewGrass™ earlier this year, Boulder Falls tried to maintain natural turf grass on its 4,000-square-foot play area. It was a losing battle.

“First of all, with 70 to 80 dogs running on it three times a day – and up to 90 dogs during the holidays – there was just no way we could keep it to more than a bunch of dirt with a little grass,” Lidberg said.

Worse, when she and her staff would apply disinfectant to the area, it would either just soak deep into the dry dirt or damage what little lawn was able to grow and withstand the punishment of her canine guests.

“With our synthetic grass, it’s much more effective,” Lidberg said of the disinfectant. “And we’ve seen no effects of it on the grass at all.”

That’s just one bonus of NewGrass™ for Boulder Falls, Lidberg said.

Because NewGrass™ is now installed where there was once mostly dirt and some scruffy grass, much less standing water accumulated during the rainy season in a depressed area of the yard that lies up against the main building, Lidberg said.

That’s a good thing, because the standing water bred bacteria on the rocks used as rip-rap at the foot of the building.

The resort has also next to no mud and dirt being tracked inside since it installed NewGrass™, which means less time and money spent keeping the walkways and inside areas clean.

“Where the synthetic grass is now, in the rainy season we just had mud,” Lidberg said. “You take 4,000 square feet of dirt, and put a lot of rain on it, and you get a lot of mud.”

The other added benefit of NewGrass™ is that Boulder Falls is even more proud of showing itself off to visitors and potential customers than ever before.

“People see a bright green patch of play area for their dogs, and that’s a lot more attractive than a big dirt bowl out there,” Lidberg said. “We saw the benefits of the synthetic grass immediately.”

TEMPE, Ariz. – Synthetic grasses such as NewGrass™ are a valid alternative in promoting water conservation, according to preliminary results from a long-term research project.

The conclusion is significant because for years, artificial lawns have been ignored as a serious water conservation measure.

“I think it’s probably a good niche product for a lot of people,” said Marc Campbell, a water planning analyst with the Salt River Project (SRP) in Tempe, Ariz., and director of the research project.

After more than 1½ years of observing, testing and evaluating several plots of artificial grass similar to NewGrass™, the SRP – the country’s third-largest public utility company – says it can give synthetic grass the thumbs up as a genuine water conservation alternative.

The SRP put synthetic grass side-by-side with natural local grasses and xeriscaping as part of its ongoing efforts to give consumers new and better information about water conservation alternatives, including products like NewGrass™.

“We did consumer focus groups, asking people about water conservation supplies, landscaping, conservation measures and possible new programs,” Campbell said. “We asked them what they’d like to know about grass options and about landscaping alternatives.”

“We learned that despite our efforts to push xeriscaping, there were a majority of people that just wanted to have a natural grass landscape,” Campbell said.
That’s a big concern in an area where a draught is ongoing and, according to Campbell, an estimated 60 percent of all residential water use is for outdoor landscaping and swimming pools.

SRP wanted to study synthetic grass as a conservation measure because it is gaining acceptance as a landscaping alternative in general, and an increasing number of cities are “starting to consider it a little more seriously” as well, Campbell said.

“Generally, people are looking at synthetic grass a little more seriously than they did a couple of years ago,” he said. “We want to give the general public and the cities here in the Valley the information they need to make their own decisions about whether to use it and if it’s right for them.”

TEMPE, Ariz. – Synthetic grasses like NewGrass™ may get hotter than natural turf under a harsh sun, but they also cool off very quickly when you step on them, a long-term research project has concluded.

The findings are important because for years, artificial lawns have had a bad reputation for heating up to uncomfortable and possibly harmful temperatures in some climates. But until now, an impartial source had not studied the cooling properties of synthetic grasses.

Artificial grass also doesn’t fade under the extreme Arizona sun, the study is showing.

The findings are from a long-term, ongoing water conservation research project sponsored by the country’s third-largest public utility company. The Salt River Project (SRP) is sponsoring the research as part of its ongoing efforts to help give consumers new and better information about water conservation alternatives. The project has put synthetic grass side-by-side with natural local grasses and xeriscaping.

After more than 1½ years of observing, testing and evaluating several plots of artificial grass, the SRP says it can give synthetic grass the thumbs up as a genuine water conservation alternative.,

“It seems durable. It hasn’t faded. It needs a little maintenance, but really next to none,” said Marc Campbell, a water planning analyst with utility provider and director of the research project. “You need to rake it from time to time to keep the blades looking full. And you need to hose it off to remove the dust that inevitably lands on it, with the winds and dust we get here.”

SRP tested the differences in temperature between the synthetic grass, asphalt, xeriscape landscape and natural grass. And while the synthetic grass can get quite hot, especially under central Arizona’s harsh summer sun it also cooled off quickly underfoot and has never gotten so hot that it’s burned anyone’s feet, Campbell said.

“You couldn’t stand on that asphalt without burning your feet, but the synthetic turf cooled down rapidly under the foot … since it doesn’t retain heat,” Campbell said,

Campbel also said that in the shade, synthetic grass didn’t heat up as much as asphalt and cooled much more quickly.

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. – After years of throwing away money trying to turn the proverbial sow’s ear into a silk purse, one Arizona elementary school has decided to install synthetic grass in its playground rather than keep trying to grow the natural stuff.

“We’ve been fighting this battle for years now; we tried several times to grow our own grass,” said Laurie Ocampo, principal of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School in Casa Grande, Ariz. “We’d plant grass and get it growing, and the minute the kids would get on it, it would be torn up, and we would end up with a dirt playground.”

It wasn’t just the wear and tear caused by the school’s 340 or so students that undermined the school’s attempts to grow a playground of natural grass.

The school is in the very arid Southwest, nearly 30 miles south of Phoenix. The ground is tough and by nature, does not welcome nature grass.

“We looked into alternatives and decided that synthetic grass just made more sense,” Ocampo said. St. Anthony chose to have STC (Synthetic Turf Company) of nearby Scottsdale install a variety of NewGrass™ brand synthetic lawn.

Ocampo joined St. Anthony after the school had decided to install an artificial lawn on its 11,000-square-foot playground. So, she was unfamiliar with artificial lawns before watching the installation at her school earlier this summer.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “I had never seen artificial lawns installed in such a big area. They (the STC installation team) explained it all to me, the steps involved. And it was all done in a week.”

“It’s beautiful,” Ocampo said of the completed installation. “It looks like a park.”
The results have garnered similarly positive reviews from residents in the school’s neighborhood.

“People walk by, and they say, ‘Wow, what have you done with the lawn this summer? Boy, you really must be watering this a lot,’” she said. “We’ve had a lot of compliments on it.”

Ocampo concedes, however, that the true test for the installation will come when the students return from summer vacation.

“If they like it, and if they don’t tear it up, then it’s a real success,” she said.

Based on how the lawn fares under the children’s treatment, St. Anthony may look into installing NewGrass™ in its smaller pre-school yard, Ocampo said.

“We’ll see how the big one does first,” she said.

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™ 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.

Two other playground culprits — the dust and dirt a typical schoolyard can create —are meanwhile eliminated with a synthetic grass.

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. If it is, then all you might need to persuade yourself to choose an artificial lawn for your yard is to picture your yard with a new synthetic lawn against your existing turf yard in the off season – or against your neighbor’s lawn any time of year.

Perhaps the most common reason to consider an artificial lawn is because it can give you a beautiful, fade-resistant and maintenance-free lawn anywhere. This is especially true when you install one of the new-generation, high-quality artificial grasses like NewGrass™ from Scottsdale-based NewGrass, Inc.

A synthetic lawn can fit perfectly in the middle of the desert, in a busy city center or in suburbia. It works on a large residential thoroughfare or a quiet cul-de-sac.

• Not having to maintain a lawn anymore is usually the biggest selling point. Caring for a traditional lawn requires so much hassle and expense. Many homeowners have other reasons to get rid of the time and aggravations of upkeep that a turf yard demands.
• Maybe you like to travel – or your business requires you to be away from home. Many people choose an artificial lawn because they can leave home for as long as they want and not worry about whether their grass will survive. They don’t need to worry about setting sprinkler settings or having their lawn maintained while they’re out of town.
• Maybe your health or age doesn’t allow you to put the time and energy into yard upkeep. Many NewGrass™ customers say they choose an artificial lawn simply because they want to put more of their valuable time and energy into tasks they enjoy more than taking care of a turf lawn.
• Many homeowners choose synthetic grass simply because they consider it more environmentally responsible than having a natural-turf lawn in arid or drought-plagued regions of the United States. Artificial grass does not need to be watered, fertilized, mowed or treated with pesticides. Environmentalists and a growing number of water conservation organizations and cities endorse synthetic lawns because they save water and also have the benefit of not requiring pesticides.
• Many homeowners and commercial property owners choose synthetic grass because they get tired of their dogs ruining their natural turf yards. The new-generation artificial grasses are incredibly close to the real thing – and dogs and kids agree! NewGrass™, for example, has been selected for its pet runs by three of the most recognized pet resorts in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area.