Fort Worth, Texas – With the recent addition of authorized representatives in Seattle, Northern California, both of the Carolinas, New York, NewGrass® announces a true coast-to-coast presence as the leader in the artificial grass industry.

In addition, NewGrass® has agreements pending with companies in Massachusetts, Florida, Wyoming, Colorado and Nevada, said company president Greg Goehner.

In Arizona, strong sales and growing demand have meanwhile led NewGrass® to create a new position of Regional Southwest Manager to better serve that market.

The newest additions to the growing roster of high quality installers and distributors who feature NewGrass® are:

• Artscapes, in Redwood City, Calif., about 25 miles of San Francisco, serving the Palo Alto, and Menlo Park areas.
• Supergreen, serving Charleston, S.C. and the area’s resort islands: Kiawah, Seabrook, Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island.
• The Landscape Company, serving the greater Wake Forest/Raleigh, N.C., area.
• Keith Ackerson, an independent landscaper in Westchester County, N.Y.
• Jeff Shaw, in Seattle, who is also a PGA professional golfer.

“We are very excited about the potential with such great representatives in these areas,” Goehner said.

“Water conservation and environmental concerns are on the minds of a lot of people in all of these regions, but people also want a green lawn they can enjoy all year,” Goehner said. “These quality companies and NewGrass® really have a solution for people to meet those demands.”

Michael Patelis is the NewGrass® Regional Manager for Arizona.

“Michael has a great background in sales, and he has super organization skills,” Goehner said. “We’re fortunate to have him as we move into a new phase for the company in Arizona.”
Each of the new members of the NewGrass® lineup is customer-oriented and are locally owned and operated, Goehner said.

Fort Worth, Texas – NewGrass® has once again received national television recognition –this time for being the smart way to have an environmentally friendly green lawn.

A recent episode of American Shopper, seen on the Fine Living TV Network, featured NewGrass among products to help viewers have an “Eco Green Yard.” The episode airs again on the Fine Living TV Network on March 30, at 10 a.m. Eastern.

“There’s no better way to show off your green grass than with the ultimate in green grass … NewGrass®,” American Shopper host Lesley Ann Machado says at the start of the segment.
“NewGrass® is an eco-friendly alternative to natural grass,” Machado says, while the viewer sees video of NewGrass® installations.

Fine Living TV is the first television network “dedicated to inspiring and empowering people to find the most rewarding ways to spend their time and money, allowing them to uncover the greatest value from their experiences,” according to its Web site.

American Shopper seeks to take “real consumer concerns, compare products and prices, then advise the consumer what to do when the product arrives at their door,” according to its Web site. The show does not accept product placements or advertorials.

“It says a lot about the reputation of NewGrass® when a show of this caliber and with its audience comes to us, unsolicited,” NewGrass® president Greg Goehner said.

“It’s even more affirming,” Goehner said, “that they wanted to highlight NewGrass® in connection with environmental concerns and water conservation.”

NewGrass® was previously featured on Bob Vila, the nationally syndicated home improvement show, and on Modern Marvels, the History Chanel show. Episodes of Designing Spaces and Dinner and a Movie featuring NewGrass® are currently in pre-production as well, Goehner said.

Fort Worth, Texas – With Spring just around the corner, NewGrass® continues to lead the artificial lawn industry in product quality with competitive pricing, unveiling improvements to current lineup and adding one new variety.

NewGrass Fescue™ and NewGrass Rye™ have been greatly improved, without any change in consumer pricing. NewGrass Premium Rye™ is a superior new lawn for the discerning customer.
Company President Greg Goehner said the improvements and additions to the NewGrass line are the result of cooperation between NewGrass and one of its manufacturers.

“Our solid partnerships with our manufacturers is one thing that really sets us apart in this industry,” Goehner said.

NewGrass® products and installations that were featured on the nationally syndicated Bob Vila home improvement show and on the History Channel’s Modern Marvels series.

Innovative NewGrass Premium Rye is unique in the synthetic grass industry. Its vigorous 72-ounce two-fiber system make it incredibly immune to wrinkling or warping, even in the most extreme temperatures. And it looks and feels wonderfully alive.

NewGrass Fescue now features thicker blades with a 48-ounce treated fiber system. The result is a more lush, single-fiber lawn. NewGrass Rye now has a 46-ounce duo-fiber blade system.
All three varieties now have backings that are more flexible, less prone to cracking, have absolutely no residual finish, and are just as strong and rugged as before.

NewGrass Sport™ rounds out the current product lineup.

“We’re absolutely thrilled to be able to bring consumers more choice, better products and greater value,” Goehner said. “We’ve always believed we had top-shelf products. Now, they’re even better.”

Fort Worth, TX. – NewGrass® is excited to announce its expansion in North Texas, an area that continues to face water restrictions while enduring an annual weather cycle that moves between scorching summer heat waves and icy winter cold snaps.

Synthetic Grass Pros, based in Lewisville, Texas, is the latest Authorized NewGrass® Installer. Sitting northwest of Dallas, Lewisville is part of the sprawling Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

Synthetic Grass Pros has its eye on the entire North Texas region … and beyond, said company President Tim Dvorak.

“We know there’s a lot of interest here in finding options to natural sod turf for a lot of reasons,” Dvorak said. “NewGrass® is the perfect answer, whether it’s to do the right thing to protect our water supply and environment, or to add more living space to your home year-round.”

Like most of America, Texas loves its green lawns.

“We have this old habit. We’re programmed to believe we need to have a perfectly green lawn, and we’re killing our environment trying to do that,” Dvorak said. “The pesticides, the fertilizers, the mowing, the watering.”

“We’re proud to offer NewGrass® as an alternative to natural sod grass for all the right reasons,” Dvorak said.

Kimberly Van Buren, Synthetic Grass Pros sales director, said one of the biggest reasons she’s excited about selling NewGrass® is the opportunity to give North Texas homeowners more usable outdoor living space year-round.

“After the heaviest rain, during the hottest and driest months of summer, you have a yard to enjoy,” Van Buren said. “In areas of the yard where natural sod grass just doesn’t take no matter how hard you try, that’s where NewGrass® really is a winner.”

NewGrass® will ring in the New Year by significantly ramping up its national presence and expanding its network development.

Starting in early January, NewGrass President Greg Goehner will be hosting an exhibitor’s booth at landscape and nursery association trade shows from New York to South Carolina to Northern California.

“We’re very excited about taking NewGrass on the road at the distributor level,” Goehner said. “We’ve been gradually and mindfully building our foundation, to make sure we could fully support the type of high-quality companies we’re looking for as authorized distributors.”

NewGrass currently has authorized representatives in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, Scottsdale, Ariz., and Los Angeles, CA.

More and more landscapers, landscape designers and nursery owners are adding a modern artificial grass and quality installation to their list of services. An increasing number of homeowners and businesses are considering synthetic lawns in response to water conservation concerns and water use restrictions. Others choose artificial grass to add usable, year-round living space to homes, schools and businesses.

“We’re offering the landscape industry another arrow for their quiver,” Goehner. “And we think we’re right on target with what more and more homeowners and businesses will want.”
The NewGrass trade show schedule for the first two months of 2008 is:

• Jan. 9: 40th Annual Professional Turf & Landscape Conference and Trade Show, New York State Turf & Landscape Association, Westchester County Center, White Plains, NY.
• Jan. 17-19: 2008 Green & Growin’ Trade Show, North Carolina Association of Nurserymen, Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, NC.
• Jan. 24-25: WinterGreen 2008, Georgia Green Industry Association Trade Show, The Classic Center, Athens, GA.
• Jan. 29: 18th Annual Nevada Landscape Association Trade Show & Conference, Grand Sierra Resort, Reno, NV.
• Jan. 31: NorCal (Northern California) Spring Trade Show, Exposition Center, San Mateo, Calif.
• Feb. 7-9: SCHI 2008, South Carolina Nursery & Landscape Association Trade Show, Myrtle Beach Convention Center, Myrtle Beach, SC.

Gainey Ranch, one of the most admired communities in metro Phoenix, has chosen NewGrass® to determine whether the tony subdivision will use synthetic grass to solve some of its nettlesome landscaping challenges.

The community is considering synthetic lawns partly in response to the ongoing drought in the Southwest. But more directly, it needs to meet the frustration of being unable to grow and maintain natural grass under the large, mature shade trees that populate the community.
“We want to know if this is a viable alternative for heavily shaded areas in our community where we can’t grow turf grass,” said Scott Williams, director of maintenance for the Gainey Ranch Community Association.

“We want to maintain the lush look of our natural landscaping throughout Gainey Ranch, and that’s getting much more difficult in areas where we have these beautiful, huge canopy shade trees of Palo Verde, Mesquite and Ironwood,” said Scott Williams, director of maintenance for the Gainey Ranch Community Association.

Gainey Ranch comprises 19 distinct neighborhoods with more than 1,000 homes nestled along the fairways of award-winning Gainey Ranch Golf Club. Properties range from condos to lush estates. Prices currently range from the upper $300,000’s to more than $3 million. The community is also home to one of the top-rated health and fitness centers in Metro Phoenix.
The community has had NewGrass® installed two public areas that get a lot of drive-by traffic. The Gainey Ranch maintenance department has had no luck maintaining natural turf grass in either area, Williams said.

STC (Synthetic Turf Company) of Scottsdale installed NewGrass Rye in one of the test areas and NewGrass Fescue in the other.

“We want to know from homeowners what they think of it … does it fit the surrounding landscape and does it fit in with the community’s feel,” Williams said. “And of course we’re looking at how it holds up.”

So far, his office has received “lots of positive phone calls” about the installations, Williams said.
The community has no covenants against synthetic lawns. But any installation of synthetic lawn requires the approval of the association’s architectural committee, and artificial grass has never been installed in a Gainey Ranch front yard or common area, Williams said.

The architectural committee’s evaluation of NewGrass® is part of an ongoing assessment of its landscape and design plan as the community matures, Williams said.

NewGrass™ has helped make playtime nicer, greener and safer for toddlers at a 100-year-old non-profit day care center in San Jose, Calif.

NewGrass™ offered its modern artificial grass at its own cost to help St. Elizabeth’s Day Home turn its hard-dirt, potentially unsafe and nearly barren toddler play area into a year-round expanse of
child-friendly green lawn.

“Now, they can run, tumble and get right up and start again,” said St. Elizabeth’s Executive Director Dianna Ballesteros.
Perhaps equally important, the artificial lawn is so natural-feeling that it has given the toddler’s a whole new world to explore – a world in which to nurture their own natural curiosity.

“One of the developmental areas of toddlers is that they behave as if the whole world exists for only them,” Ballesteros said. “And in this yard, they can become fully engaged regardless of all their needs and be safe and happy explorers!”

As it was, the St. Elizabeth’s toddlers area at best offered a rugged, uninviting terrain. At worst, the tract was completely unusable in winter, when seasonal rains turned it into a plot of muddy soil.

“Toddlers are quite capable little people and can get into serious trouble exploring their environments,” Ballesteros said. “But with the (new synthetic) yard, they can freely explore and are less likely to get injured. We are very pleased with the installation.”

The toddler play area was unable to support turf grass, Ballesteros said. As an option, the school tried using rubber mulch as infill on the surface. The mulch seemed to prevent injuries and was safer than the hard dirt ground that the children had to play on before. But at the same time, the ground rubber pellets presented another problem: The youngest children would put the small pieces of rubber in their mouths.

“Many families and parents realize that (the toddler age) is a time when they have to ‘child proof’ the environment for safety,” Ballesteros said. “Well, we feel like we child–proofed their toddler yard with the installation of NewGrass.”

Based on bids the center had received from area landscapers, St. Elizabeth’s thought it would need close to $20,000 to install a quality artificial grass for its toddler’s area. It was money the center didn’t have.

St. Elizabeth’s was founded in 1907 by the Sisters of the Holy Family to provide care for needy children. A United Way agency, the center has grown from an initial enrollment of 39 children to nearly 200 today.

In response to an article in the San Jose Mercury News about the school’s need for a safe, year-round play area for its toddlers, readers donated $12,000 to the project. The Kiwanis Club of San Jose had already donated $5,000.

A project supervisor and two installers from STC (Synthetic Turf Company), a NewGrass™ distributor in Scottsdale, traveled to San Jose to install the new play area free of charge. Jos. J. Albanese, Inc. Concrete Construction, of San Jose, supplied the base material and prepared the site for the installation.

In the end, St. Elizabeth’s was able to pay for the entire project with the money donated by the Kiwanis Club and Mercury News readers - thanks to the help of NewGrass™, STC and Albanese Concrete.

“Toddlers are always in the act of ‘wow’ - discovering their world,” Ballesteros continued. “Now they can walk, toddle, push toys and can easily possess the yard in totality!”

Trevor Brooks, NewGrass vice president of marketing, learned about St. Elizabeth’s and its need for a safe play area last December, while performing his regular daily Internet search for news about the synthetic grass industry. He saw the same article in the Mercury News that future donors to the project saw, describing the problem of the toddler’s play area and how St. Elizabeth’s wanted to install an artificial lawn there.

“I saw this article, and it said how the center relied heavily on donations and community support, and the one major improvement it really needed now was a synthetic lawn for the toddler’s area,” Brooks said.

“We’ve installed NewGrass™ in day care centers that needed it for the same reasons Ms. Ballesteros had at her center, and we’ve had great results,” Brooks said. “We saw the price St. Elizabeth’s was being quoted, and it seemed very high to us. Plus, we simply believe every child should have a safe, clean place to play. So we thought, hey, we can really help out here and offer the job at our cost.”

The Ralph Lauren flagship store on New York City’s tony Madison Avenue sported NewGrass™ in its summer line window display.

The store, at 867 Madison Ave., is the former Rhinelander Mansion and is among the few remaining truly great turn-of-the-century homes in Manhattan. One of New York’s finest architectural treasures, the building was built in the 1890s, but was later abandoned and fell into disrepair. Ralph Lauren began an extensive renovation project on the mansion in 1983 to re-create the classic opulence of the original structure.

“We’re thrilled to have our product used in such a beautiful and prestigious setting,” said Greg Goehner, president of NewGrass.
He added that the NewGrass team at the company’s headquarters in Scottsdale, Ariz., were now wearing Polo brand shirts with the NewGrass™ logo.

“We have the best-looking staff in town!” Goehner quipped.

Nike is meanwhile considering installing NewGrass™ in its retail shoe display at company headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., Goehner said.

“They’re considering having their line of shoes sit on NewGrass™ Rye,” Goehner said. “We should know more soon.”

Scottsdale, Ariz. – NewGrass is excited to announce its expansion into California, which continues to be hard-hit by draught and where water authorities are encouraging alternatives to traditional, water-hungry turf landscaping.

NewGrass Landscape & Design, based in Arlington, Texas, is launching an office in Los Angeles this month.

“We’re seeing a lot of interest for NewGrass™ from California” Trevor Brooks EVP of Marketing for NewGrass said.

The Los Angeles office is headed by Larry Reno, a veteran in the synthetic grass industry. He can be contacted at (800) 516-4916 extension 11. NewGrass Landscape & Design opened its doors about six months ago and has its eyes set on New York for its next expansion move.

The expansion into California gives residents and commercial property owners up and down the West Coast access to NewGrass™ sales and installation expertise. NewGrass™ currently has distributorships in the Phoenix/Scottsdale Valley and in Dallas-Fort Worth.

All or part of Texas, Arizona and California are suffering from continued draught conditions, and several of their municipalities are encouraging water-conserving landscaping alternatives such as NewGrass™.

The Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California earlier in July immediately began offering offer homeowners what it calls a “modest” rebate to install synthetic grass.

NewGrass™ will be featured in an episode of Modern Marvels that illuminates some of the newest trends in America’s pursuit of the perfect lawn.

The episode, “Modern Marvels: Yard Tech,” premiers on The History Channel this Thursday, April 12.

“For the last half-century, the American male has found relaxation, refuge and status in his yard,” the show’s producers said. “And the center of his efforts: the quest for the perfect lawn.”

“NewGrass is a synthetic grass that’s catching on in regions where water supplies are a problem,” the producers said. “And it’s a vast improvement on the Astroturf of the 1970s and 80s.”

“Modern Marvels: Yard Tech” will premiere on the History Channel on Thursday, April 12 at:

10 p.m. and 2 a.m. (Eastern)
10 p.m. and 2 a.m. (Pacific)
9 p.m. and 1 a.m. (Central)
8 p.m. and midnight (Mountain)

Check your local television directory as well, because the times may be different depending on your satellite provider.

Modern Marvels brings to life the stories of the companies and people who are the “doers, dreamers and sometime-schemers” who have created everyday items, the program’s producers say.

“Modern Marvels: Yard Tech” unveils the ingenuity, invention and imagination of modern yard technologies. It shows how NewGrass™ is an attractive and environmentally conscientious alternative in the quest for a beautiful lawn, especially in regions where water conservation is a growing concern.

The episode highlights NewGrass™ installed at the Arizona State University Campus Day Care Center, said NewGrass president Greg Goehner.

“We’re thrilled that a show like Modern Marvels features NewGrass™ as a valid alternative to natural turf,” Goehner said. “City after city in the West and Southwest is either restricting water use or offering residents incentives to replace sod grass with artificial grass … or doing both of those things.”

“Being recognized first by Bob Vila and now by Modern Marvels makes us feel good about what we have to offer and that NewGrass™ really is a lifestyle choice for people,” Goehner said.

NewGrass™ was recently featured on Bob Vila, the nationally syndicated home renovation and improvement show. When Vila was helping a young Massachusetts family add usable space to their suburban Boston home without adding on to their property, one solution was to replace their natural sod backyard with NewGrass™, one of the new generation of synthetic grasses.

“Modern Marvels: Yard Tech” will re-air on Friday, April 13, Saturday, April 14, and several times after that. Check your local listings or the History Channel Web site for these dates or any other information about this program or the series.

Based in Scottsdale, NewGrass™ features three varieties of synthetic lawns that have the look and feel of natural grass, without the maintenance or need for watering.