Our Top 5 Turf Facts:
Turf is great! You might expect us to say that, but, before you call in the cement mixer or decide to deck over your yard, consider what a beautiful garden you could create with a crisp bright lawn. The list below show just how great turf is, and this fabulous stuff needs only the occasional trim!
- It’s an oxygen factory! After trees and algae, turf generates more oxygen than any other plant life on earth. Which you could say, is probably the most important favour plants do us humans. An acre of turf can provide enough oxygen for 64 people per day- more oxygen than can an acre of rainforest.
- It’s a natural air conditioner! Turf is cooler than concrete- and can help circulate cool, oxygenated air around your garden. With a lower temperature by 10-14 degrees than other yard surfaces, it not only fights global warming with its great oxygen-emitting properties- it keeps the temperature nice and cool as well. Having a front lawn outside your home can do the same job as a massive, 70-ton industrial air conditioner.
- It absorbs crazy amounts of water. While a lawn can survive on only one inch of water per week (that’s 3mm a day!) your lawn also has the ability to soak up 20,000 litres of water in one go before it begins to build up. This is why simple turf plays such a vital role in the prevention of flooding over wide areas- yet as more people concrete over their yards, the risk of flooding will increase.
- It’s antibiotic. This one blew our minds. Studies in the USA into the role of artificial turf in sports showed a higher rate of MRSA and serious bacterial infections in baseball players who played on artificial grass. This is because, while turf is swarming with good or neutral bacteria that can suppress bug-causing infections (left by mess etc) the synthetic grass had no such ‘immune system’- causing infections to multiply & thrive in the plastic grass & rubber underlay. While turf naturally drains, washing out messes or harmful substances, artificial surfaces retain whatever is dropped on them until they are cleaned. Furthermore, the millions of individual grass leaves (up to 200,000 per square metre) in your lawn, safely traps dust & pollution that otherwise drifts into the atmosphere.
- A single grass plant has 600 miles of root- further than the distance from London to Berlin! A 40 foot by 20 foot lawn will be supported by 263 MILLION miles of roots- twice the distance to Mars!