Local grass carpets new front lawn at ABAC

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Newly renovated Tift and Lewis halls provide a striking backdrop as fresh sod goes down on the front campus of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Thursday. A rededication ceremony for the front campus project will be held March 1.

January 18, 2013

Local grass carpets new front lawn at ABAC

Anonymous Special to The Gazette The Tifton Gazette Fri Jan 18, 2013, 08:40 PM EST

TIFTON — Because of the dishwater gray skies, the first light of dawn came late to the campus of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Thursday morning.

But just as the eastern sky began to show its first glimmer of sunshine, a yellow Patten Seed/Super Sod Company tractor-trailer load of gigantic rolls of TifBlair centipede sod pulled to a stop on Moore Highway squaring up with the front lawn of the campus.

Before the truck had time to even settle in its tracks, a fork lift operator began lifting the rolls off the trailer onto the ground so that personnel from Landscape Associates in Tifton could begin the task of carpeting ABAC’s front yard with what Dr. Wayne Hanna calls the “most improved and only certified centipedegrass cultivar on the market.”

And it was developed right here in Tifton jointly by the University of Georgia and the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service.

“It has superior seedling vigor and improved tolerance to low soil pH and cold temperatures,” Hanna, a longtime researcher at the Coastal Plain Experiment Station, said. “It prefers lower fertility and adapts well to dry conditions.”

Patten Seed/Super Sod President Ben Copeland, a 1964 graduate of ABAC, said 13 tractor-trailer loads of the sod, which will cover 130,000 square feet, will arrive on the ABAC campus during the next two days from the company’s fields in Lakeland.

Copeland said TifGrand and Emerald will also be used on the ABAC front lawn to enhance an already spectacular view of Tift Hall, Lewis Hall and Herring Hall.

Hanna said TifGrand is a “dark green and dense interspecific hybrid Bermudagrass. It has shade tolerance and performs well under up to 60 percent less light. Emerald is a fine-textured zoysiagrass interspecific hybrid. It is a vigorous grass with frost and shade tolerance.”

TifGrand and Emerald were also developed by UGA and the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Tifton. The U.S. Golf Association Green Section assisted in the Emerald development.

ABAC President David Bridges said the new sod on the front campus is another step toward the complete rehabilitation of the three original buildings on campus, the front lawn and the plaza area behind the three buildings. A grand rededication ceremony for the entire project will be held March 1.

“It promises to be another great day in the history of ABAC,” Bridges said. “There’s a lot of work to be done between now and then, but we are making progress every day.”

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