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February 2025

On the cost of switching to plastic turf

By | Lawn Care, Turf | No Comments

The problem

As soon as I took a look at the lady’s small sparse lawn, I understood her frustrations. She lives in a strata and the lawn is a skinny rectangle where grass barely holds on. Of course, this was in early January so you can’t really judge the patch; I’m sure it looks better in May.

Still, it’s a small patch, and a tall spruce tree towers right above it, which means plenty of shade and acidic needles raining down on it all year. Grass needs plenty of light to thrive.

Shade, spruce needles and heavy use.

Can you switch to turf?

Yes, you can but it will cost you. The homeowner got one $2,500 quote and gave up. Normally you would get at least three quotes but, clearly, it was too expensive. Considering the cost of living in 2025 Canada and Donald Trump’s tariff threats, plastic turf is a luxury, not a necessity.

Why is it so pricey? You have to pay for materials and labour, follow the steps outlined below and deal with poor access. There is only stair access which means heavy labour.

Plastic steps

Step one involves removing the old grass and maybe one to two inches of soil, then levelling it nicely. All of this excess dirt has to be walked down stairs.

Once this initial step is completed, you have to install crushed rock which forms the firm base for your plastic turf. And, again, this is a nightmare for the underpaid hired hands because they have to walk it up the stairs, probably in buckets.

Raking and compaction follow. The machine can be lifted up the stairs but it won’t be pleasant. Then you run it over the rock base to make sure it’s solid.

The last step involves installing the turf and anchoring it with pins.

$2,500 seems like a lot of money to switch a small rectangular patch of grass to turf but there’s considerable labour involved, plus the cost of materials.

Crushed rock base, heavily compacted.

What CAN you do?

Well, we pruned the spruce tree, taking out some of the lower branches but nothing too crazy. There are privacy issues because the spruce tree forms a natural barrier between neighbours who may or may not want to see each other too much. But it should let more light in.

You can also get rid of the needles periodically and apply lots of lime to try and lower the pH level. When the soil is too acidic the grass plants may not be able to get or use available nutrients.

Water and fertilize liberally.

Conclusion

I love this example: not every homeowner is ready to shell out thousands for plastic turf. Not that I like plastic turf. Personally, I would keep the weak lawn even if my pockets were deep.

Why beech trees are hard to forget!

By | Gardens, Trees | No Comments

Hands bleeding

One of the trees we looked at during my winter plant identification course walk was a huge weeping beech tree (Fagus). It’s located near the main building inside the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens. It’s a beautiful, massive, weeping specimen.

In our multi-family strata complexes, where there is less space available, it’s common to see columnar beech specimens which stay upright and narrow. All you have to do is prune them back into shape once in a while.

It wasn’t hard to find the leathery brown leaves; there were piles of them by the rock wall. So I collected a few and now I’m pressing them in one of my books at home. Looking at leaves in winter obviously helps you identify the tree. Assuming the leaves are really from the tree you’re looking at. Always collect as much information as you can.

Buds

Tree buds are obviously the key identifying feature in winter. And here I have a lot of bad experience. Years ago in White Rock, my task was to thin out beech trees that had previously only been power sheared. It was a bit slow because beeches have this habit of fusing their branches.

That’s another key identifying feature; and it makes pruning slow and annoying because the branches you want to remove, may be fused with neighboring branches. That makes it difficult to extract them and could lead to unintended large holes in your tree.

Blood on my hands

By far the worst beech bud feature is its sharpness. I didn’t pay any attention to this in the beginning. I knew it was a beech tree and I made a lot of mess. So when it came to removing the branches I lost a lot of blood when my fingers collided with the sharp buds. I couldn’t believe how sharp and dangerous the buds were. I literally had blood on my hands.

That’s why it’s very unlikely I will ever forget beech trees and their sharp, pointy buds. Beeches are beautiful trees, yes. I especially like their fuzzy seed capsules and the seeds inside them. We found some in the leaf litter at Van Dusen. But do be careful when handling beech branches because the buds are super sharp. I think you need heavy duty gloves to handle them.

Beech tree buds