Quality Native Grasses and Wildflowers to Enhance Your Landscape-New Mexico

"Earth laughs in flowers."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

You want the best for your landscape; it is your Oasis, after all. With TerrawoRx Services™, you'll find quality native grasses and wildflowers seeding to meet your needs and expectations.

Replacing your turf grass? Consider with wild grasses and flowers instead of rock or plastic. Enhance your landscape with quality xeric native grasses and wildflowers. Save water and reduce heat with this beautiful, easy to keep alternative!

**For quality native grasses and wildflower seeding, call TerrawoRx Services™ at 505.321.3717 today or Contact us to set an appointment.**

TerrawoRx Services™: Turning BROWN to GREEN™

The Truth About Rock & Plastic Turf

The unfortunate aspect about building specifications is that creativitty is often lost and a case of follow the leader entails. In this region many of the landscape decision makers are following the same path with xeriscape without considering the positive impact native vegetation can have aesthetically and environmentally when installed correctly.

Synthetic Lawns and Rock Mulch are advertized to be xeric but in reality aren't. Both have been advertized as saving water but are unsustainable and nonconservational. So the question rises; "what is being lost in the trade?". Research we have conducted indicates that energy, water, and environmental stresses are created that negatively impact the property as a whole. Some of these stresses such as increasing the heat index on landscape plants, structures, and surrounding environment end up increasing water and energy usage on multiple levels.

Additionally, herbicide usage rises with the installation of these landscape types, drastically effecting human, vegetation, and animal health. These landscape options utilize large amounts of petro-chemicals to produce or install these materials.

Knowing these factors it seems nature has offered us a better way that is native, xeric, and incorporates real conservation....through Grasses.

Surface Type	Average Surface Temperature (7am-7pm) degrees Fahrenheit (F)
Synthetic Turf	117
Asphalt	109
Bare Soil	98
Concrete	94
Grasses	78

As communities grow from a village to a town to a city and increase in temperature occurs. In major cities the term urban heat island is used to characterize the temperature increase. On warm summer days, the temperature can be 10^o F greater in an urban area compared to the surrounding area. A 5,000 square foot Bluegrass Lawn contains about 9 million shoots, while an average creeping Bentgrass putting green contains 72 million individual shoots. Each of these plant shoots carries a cooling process called transpiration. Transpiration helps reduce temperatures in the urban environment by dissipating high levels of radiation. To that end, grasses are considerably cooler than other common surfaces. Research at Brigham Young University has recorded temperatures on grasses twenty(20) degrees cooler than bare soils and forty(40) degrees cooler than synthetic turf.

Transpirational cooling is dependent on an adequate supply of water. In grass areas, water is provided by rainfall or by irrigation, depending on length of growing season, temperature, evapotranspiration rates, soil type, grass species and management practices. It is estimated that grasses, including residential and commercial lawns, native grass meadows, golf courses, etc., is the largest single irrigated crop in the United States. While residential landscapes are typically watered with municipal sources, golf courses irrigation comes primarily from on-site ponds and lakes that stores fresh or affluent water, wells and streams.

Regardless of location though, if supplemental irrigation is needed, there are many university bulletins and factsheets that can be used as a guide. There are standard guidelines on irrigation timing, amount, and frequency, to make sure that water is used appropriately.
Reference: Williams, C.F. and Pulley, G.E. (2002) Synthetic Surface Heat Studies, Brigham Young University

The historical data shows that the Albuquerque area was a sheep grazing community at one time. Ranging from the Valley to the Sandia Mountains was a vast mesa of Native Grasses and Wildflowers. These grasses and flowers are vital to the future benefit of our community and make any landscape more beautiful and xeric.