A home in Pikesville, Baltimore County, is surrounded by Amazoy Zoysia grass provided by Zoysia Farm Nurseries.
Written By Barbara Pash
Green fields, even turf farms, are fairly common in Carroll County, but there is one kind of verdant crop that is distinctive.
You may have seen it without registering anything but its color. And you may never have visited the farm in Taneytown, but you probably know what it grows. The plant is advertised in the Sunday Parade supplement in newspapers and in gardening and lifestyle magazines. You can find it in online ads, coupon inserts and the company’s own colorful and interactive web site. And you may even have some in your yard.
“It’s hard for people not to notice us,” said John Ridgway, the executive vice president of Zoysia Farm Nurseries, which grows and ships Zoysia grass nationwide. Before joining the nursery staff six years ago, he worked for Universal Studios’ Parks and Resorts Division as vice president of marketing and strategic planning for retail stores.
The nursery has two locations. The 200-acre farm at 3617 Old Taneytown Road, in Taneytown, serves as the retail, packaging and processing center. The grass is also grown on a 100-acre farm near Dover, Del.
The late Herbert Friedberg started Zoysia Farm Nurseries 1953. A Baltimore businessman, Friedberg heard of a drought-resistant and heat-tolerant grass being grown at the United States Department of Agriculture’s experimental farm in Beltsville, Md.
It was Zoysia grass, a species native to southeast Asia, named after the 18th Century Austrian botanist, Karl von Zois. Friedberg visited the DOA farm and was impressed. Shortly after the Agriculture Department released Zoysia for general use, Friedberg sold his chain of bowling alleys and founded the company. His son, Richard, is now company president.
Zoysia Farm Nurseries sells direct to consumers, not through other nurseries and big-box retailers like Lowe’s and The Home Depot. Ridgway said that 95 percent of its customers are homeowners. The firm ships tens of millions of Zoysia plugs annually to 46 states. The exceptions are Alaska (too cold), Hawaii (too distant), and Oregon and Washington State (too wet).
A private, employee-owned company, Zoysia Farm Nurseries has 15 full-time employees, a force that doubles in the shipping season from early March through September, according to Ridgway. The company belongs to a professional association and hires workers through The ARC (formerly The Association of Retarded Citizens).
There are two types of grasses: warm weather and cold weather. Among the former, the best known are Zoysia, Bermuda and St. Augustine grasses. Bermuda grass is a flat grass best suited to golf courses and, said Ridgway, is often used on putting greens because it can be cut short. St. Augustine needs a lot of water and is popular in Florida.
In the mid-Atlantic region, the best known of the cold weather varieties – and the most popular – are tall fescue and Kentucky blue grass.
Grass comes in three forms: seed, sod and plugs (and, for Zoysia, sprigs – chopped up stems of Zoysia grass – as well). Zoysia seeds became available about 10 years ago, but they are sold primarily to commercial users like golf courses and sod farmers. Zoysia sod is available, but because Zoysia is slow-growing, it takes sod farmers longer to produce and so is more expensive.
“It’s one of the most expensive sods,” said Mark Carroll, associate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture. “That’s why people buy [Zoysia] plugs. It’s cheaper,” He added that Zoysia Farm Nurseries is probably the best-known Zoysia seller because of its ad campaign.
There are several varieties of Zoysia grass. Zoysia Farm Nurseries sells Meyer Z-52, the original grass that was approved and released by the Agriculture Department. Zoysia is low-maintenance. It needs little water or fertilizer, has few insect and disease problems and likes it hot – a minimum of two to three hours of direct sunlight daily – and dry.
“If you’ve got moss growing, Zoysia probably won’t grow,” said Ridgway.
Zoysia Farm Nurseries propagates its grass vegetatively. It does not grow the plugs from seeds but, instead, harvests the grass so that a small strip is left in the ground. The strip subsequently regrows and spreads, to be harvested two to three years later.
Locally, Zoysia is the only grass that is sold in plug form, so there is no comparison to other grasses. Because Zoysia Farm Nurseries is privately owned, no specific financial information was available. However, a search of the Internet offers an estimated annual sales figure of between $2.5 and $5 million for Shelburne Co., Zoysia Farms Nurseries’ parent company.
Ridgway said that the number of plugs you buy depends on the size of the lawn, the distance between plugs and how quickly you want the lawn to fill in. For example, on a typical one-fourth-acre lot, about 10,000 square feet in size, you can plant 10,000 plugs one inch apart for a cost of $400. Fill-in time is one-and-a-half to two years.
By contrast, the University of Maryland’s Carroll calculated that if you bought tall fescue sod from The Home Depot or a sod farm, the cost for 10,000 square feet would be $2,500, not installed.
Despite its many good qualities, Zoysia has a few drawbacks for consumers. Unlike cold weather grasses that stay green for most of the year, when Zoysia goes dormant in winter it turns brown. Its slow growth habit is not for the homeowner who wants an instant lawn.
Still, Maryland’s Carroll calls Zoysia a “great grass” for second homes. Once established and with the right growing conditions, it’s practically indestructible. Zoysia is popular in transition zones such as the mid-Atlantic region. In this region, Meyer’s Zoysia grass, the species Zoysia Farm Nurseries sells, is the most popular.
But even in transition zones, said Carroll, Zoysia is not the number one seller. That honor goes to tall fescue.
According to Ridgway, there are perhaps a half-dozen other Zoysia farms in the country. To his knowledge, though, Zoysia Farm Nurseries is the only one dealing exclusively in Zoysia grass.
“We’re unique,” he said.
