collaboration with the Mountain Meadows Retirement Community and in cooperation with the City of Ashland’s Water Conservation Specialist, Julie Smitherman. Created as a publicly accessible way to demonstrate turf quality and drought tolerance of TWCA qualified blends, the three plots established not only maintained excellent turf quality but reduced the water use by roughly 30 percent compared to the conventional turf in the rest of the community.

In 2016, TWCA established two more test plots in the City of Brandon, Manitoba, Canada. A collaborative effort between TWCA, TWCA members Manderley Turf Products, and the City of Brandon Environmental Initiatives Coordinator, Lindsay Hargreaves; the Brandon Initiative replaced public boulevards with two different TWCA qualified drought tolerant blends. Once again, this ongoing project is intended to demonstrate both drought tolerance and turf quality in an actual location away from the tender ministrations of a turf research farm.

Expanding collaboration in the turf industry has been a recurrent theme for the TWCA as well. Beginning in 2015, I, as TWCA program administrator, have served on the Advisory Board to the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP) alongside TWCA members Dr. Mike Richardson (University of Arkansas) and Dr. Kevin Kenworthy (University of Florida) to aid in the creation of an NTEP drought trialing program. I also serve on the

Sports Turf Managers Association (STMA) Environmental Committee. TWCA also has begun working with the Greenscape Alliance; a loose consortium of organizations inextricably linked to turf including: the National Hispanic Landscape Alliance (NHLA), the Irrigation Association (IA), the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI), and Turfgrass Producers International (TPI).

In 2014, TWCA began exploring the dynamic interaction between water conservation and end user behavior. Tat year TWCA became the first organization to conduct protocol regulated Low Maintenance trialing using the copyrighted TWCA Protocol for Low Maintenance Turf as a governing document.

2015 saw TWCA tighten the requirements for qualification through an update of the copyrighted Turfgrass Water Conservation Protocol. Te updated protocol raises the mandatory minimum of qualified varieties in a TWCA branded blend from 60% to 70% and explicitly mandates quantitative prequalification data on each variety prior to entry into the TWCA qualification trialing. Te 2015 updates also expand the scope of punitive options available to the TWCA if any member is found misapplying the TWCA seal. Te updated protocol was approved and enacted February 2016 with blend requirements going into effect January 2017. Updates to the trialing protocols will go into effect with the 2016 Tall Fescue trials.

TPI Turf News September/October 2016

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