SOUTHERN LIVING HOUSE
JUSTIN WALLACE
Southern
Living
Magazine
is
the
seventh-largest monthly consumer magazine in the US and reaches 15 million
readers each month. It offers readers
Southern lifestyle ideas, from cooking and
gardening to gracious entertaining. For
the past 20 years, the magazine has built
or renovated homes from the ground up
with state of the art concepts and design.
These homes are billed as “Southern
Living Idea Houses” and are open for
public tours for approximately six months
after construction.
Last year, Sod Solutions was excited to
collaborate with Southern Living on its
“Idea House” in Senoia, Georgia. We
worked with McIntyre Turf to supply
EMPIRE Turf for the outside grounds of
the home. This year Sod Solutions and
Southern Living teamed up again to
supply grass for the “Idea House” in Nashville, Tennessee. The home is actually
going to be a bed and breakfast and was
built on the grounds of country star
Barbara Mandrell’s former home, Fontanel
Mansion.
The Southern Living design team wanted
to contrast two grasses this year so the
decision was made to go with fine-bladed
Geo Zoysia in the courtyard area of the
home and HGT Bluegrass on the surrounding grounds. Tri-Turf Sod Farms in Paris,
Tennessee donated the HGT for the project
while Beck’s Turf in Tuskegee, Alabama
provided the Geo.
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“The idea for using [Geo Zoysia] in the
courtyard is to have a nice winter contrast
when it goes dormant,” said Ed Tessier,
landscape architect for the project. “The
bluegrass on the outskirts is typical of
what you see in Middle Tennessee. The tan
of the grass in the winter will be a nice
winter contrast to the evergreen of the
boxwood and will highlight the structure of
the garden without all the color.”
The “Idea House” venture from the
turfgrass perspective seems very beneficial for brand recognition. It is always a
high profile site originating from a magazine with a tremendous amount of
influence in, at the very least, the southern
half of the United States. We have already
begun talks with Southern Living about
doing it again this year.
“The idea for using
[Geo Zoysia] in the
courtyard is to have
a nice winter
contrast when it
goes dormant...”