Permanent Products: Artificial Grass and Backyard Putting Greens
Video Transcript
So one of the most popular permanent products for the last 10 years has been artificial grass and putting greens. Same material just different pile heights for the actual turf material itself. And it's come down for, probably I would say three reasons: One is zero maintenance, so do you want to mow your lawn, do you want weed whack, do you want to pay for irrigation, do you want to fertilize, do you want to aerate, do you want a seed, do you want to do all that, so lots of times people start weighing up more like a five to ten year plan of living in the home of not buying a $500 lawn mower, a $200 weed whacker not paying somebody to come and aerate it and seed it every spring and not putting an irrigation that wastes 50 to 80 dollars a month on drinkable water, right?
So there's a lot of good reasons that people are doing it, and of course a lot of the infills, So we live in the city of Calgary and surrounding area and there are smaller yards now in favor of larger homes. So, again, you just don't want that maintenance and it doesn't make sense to do it anymore, right? And the second thing is just luxury, right, you you just want to have perfect grass all the time that you can play any sport on and kick the soccer ball, you know, play volleyball on and do cartwheels on it, put a trampoline on it, put you know, a kid's playhouse on it . All of these things make it really really popular and of course you have no dead grass, you don't have any mud, you know it's super easy to clean and it's basically, you know, we advertise it as zero maintenance and maybe a leaf blower once a month to clean off the neighbor's leaves that fell in it right? And then the lastly is, you know, that unique niche experience of having say a putting green that's artificial grass. Do you want to be putting in your backyard for a little bit more than artificial grass instead of running down to the golf course? Again you are safe at home with your family. The barbecue's going the burgers are cooking, the hot dogs are on and now you're putting with your family, you're having everybody over, all your mates over for the beer, the wine, the coffee, the tea, and you could do the putting greens. I can't tell you how many people we put them in and all of a sudden there's this familial engagement all the time with zero maintenance and it's a permanent product and it survives our winter Calgary weather and it's just something that's a really cool thing to add if you're thinking about getting the maintenance down and you want that pristine perfect look.
One of the other things that we do for artificial grass, of course, is you know mini putts right so we can do that there's a few around the city where you've got nine holes you can do that and then what we've actually done for a lot of people on larger format properties is what we call an approach green or a shot green. So we'll do a little putting green over here 50 yards over here on the acreage you do another one, seventy yards over here you do another one, then you chip and hit back and forth to them, and again you're creating kind of that par experience, and you're practicing a little bit more than just the putting greens, right? Or sometimes we'll also buy some of those sports nets right that you see to practice whacking the golf balls into and we'll do a putting green, and beside it we'll do a little practice chipping driving area that would go into that net so again you're practicing more than just a putting green, so again we're trying to hit up that whole gulf culture that's really popular in the summer, especially out here in the prairies. It's not, you know, as hot as as it is in other provinces, right, so getting out there for four or five hours makes a whole lot of sense.
Doing it every day in your own home makes even more sense now. You're safe at home doing it with your loved ones or you're just able to practice a whole lot more on a whim. You know, working from home you can go at noon and just practice for 30 minutes and have an enjoyable lunch break. What we're seeing now are a lot of younger teenagers and kids, or even people in their 20s engaging in that golf game, and of course to be able to do that at home, we're finding it's a lot cheaper than getting golf memberships, right, so if they're going to go practice you know driving ranges and mini putts but you can have that in your own home, again, this whole idea of staying safe having your people over your loved one's over, your friends, your family and doing that over dinner while things are cooking, doing that while you're throwing a load of laundry in, doing that on the commercial break between whatever sports activities you're watching, you can just zip outside and do it so it becomes that luxury experience that can be integrated into your everyday life with zero maintenance, and it's just grab the clubs and go.
