Prioritizing Fields

Save time and resources by tailoring natural lawn care management plans to your community's expectations for each field.

Fitting turf management to community expectations

Sports and recreational fields need to satisfy a number of functional and aesthetic expectations from the community. However, each field does not need to meet the same expectations. The MGG Lawn & Land Forum recommends prioritizing field management based on the Tolerance Thresholds the community has for turfgrass quality, weeds and pests on each field. To control costs and reduce synthetic product use, field managers can easily shift valuable time and resources from low priority fields to high priority fields if they establish and follow clear prioritization protocols described below.

Setting Tolerance Thresholds

Tolerance thresholds are the maximum pest or weed pressure that a location, community or crop can tolerate before control. For example, most turfgrass fields can tolerate grub density below five per square foot before exhibiting root damage. Setting manageable and reasonable tolerance thresholds helps avoid prescriptive chemical spraying that could potentially harm public health and the environment.

Case Study

Brett Hebert, Director of Public Works, City of Stoughton, WI

Brett Hebert collaborated with community members to set tolerance thresholds for weeds and used those thresholds to prioritize management of Stoughton’s parks. He says that “this structure allows us to prioritize our limited resources.”

After categorizing and prioritizing the fields, Hebert set a turf management plan for each. The three field categories and their management plans are:

Class A Fields- Highly used sporting fields or destination parks.
- These fields require strong, durable and high quality lawns to handle the foot traffic or visibility they receive. Stoughton tolerates weed pressure of 15% or less for these fields.
Class B Fields- moderately trafficked sporting fields or parks
- These fields or parks receive less frequent traffic and visibility than Class A fields. Stoughton tolerates weed pressure between 16-30% for these areas.
Class C Fields- General use, low traffic parks or natural areas
- These areas receive very little traffic and visitation or consist of natural habitats such as prairies and forests. For the most part, Stoughton avoids applying pesticides and reduces cultural management practices on Class C fields, but exercise a tolerance threshold of 31-50% for weeds.

Hebert said that the most difficult part of implementing their threshold program was “getting buy in from staff, certain folks in the community and the council, but once they understood our end goal it made perfect sense to them.”

Forum Best Management Practice: Most Midwest Grows Green NLC templates and resources depend on setting tolerance thresholds and using those thresholds to prioritize fields as done by the City of Stoughton and Park Ridge-Niles School District 64 in Image 1. This includes MGG’s Lawn Maintenance Schedule Template.

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Photo Gallery

Weed presence results from a walk-through of fields at Racetrack Park. All fields received a Class A categorization for holding sports fields

This is a blueprint of how fields were prioritized by Park Ridge-Niles School District 64. The district tiered the sports field on the northwest side and the fields near the entrance on the east side as "Category 1 or Class A Fields". Fields on the south side that are visible from the street were classified as "Category 2 or Class B Fields". Finally, the district classified fields in the corners or not visible from the street as "Category 3 or Class C Fields".