As a part of their outdoor water saving tips, the Desert Water Agency recommends low water use groundcovers such as Kurapia!

http://www.dwa.org/

Due to the unknown long term environmental impacts of artificial grass, including inability to support wildlife, significant increase in surface and air temperatures, as well as controversial health risks due to off-gassing and run-off of toxic chemicals, the association encourages its residents to consider other options first.

As an alternative to artificial grass, HWPOA recommends Kurapia as a drought tolerant alternative among their list of groundcovers.

Read the full article by Susan Reuben, Vice President of HWPOA here: http://www.holmbywestwoodpoa.org

The existing turf was replaced with drought tolerant Kurapia in order to help conserve water.

Kurapia at Famous Burger Chain

During the show, many landscaping professionals visited the Kurapia booth. There has been a growing interest and awareness of Kurapia, and we found that about half of the attendees who visited our booth had either heard of Kurapia or have had experiencing using it.

Many of these Kurapia users were repeat customers, and expressed their heartfelt praise for our turf alternative product.

For those landscaping professionals who have not had the opportunity to use Kurapia, we definitely encourage you to give it a try for its multitude of benefits including: drought tolerance, erosion control, weed suppression, recycled water tolerance, animal and pet friendly, evergreen color, and more.

We plan to attend next year’s convention, so please come visit us at our booth next year!

Kurapia on display at our distributor’s booth

Kurapia on display at our distributor’s booth

Kurapia on display at West Coast Turf booth with Drought Angel logo.

Kurapia completes a drought tolerant evaluation study.

UC Davis and UC Agriculture and Natural Resources jointly performed irrigation trials of Kurapia, a utility ground cover for a 2 year evaluation period between 2012 - 2014.
The study was conducted by investigators Karrie Reid, Environmental Horticulture Advisor, UCCE, San Joaquin County, Loren Oki, UCCE Specialist in Landscape Horticulture, UC Davis, Dept. of Plant Sciences, Jared Sisneroz, Staff Research Associate, UC Davis, Dept. of Plant Sciences, in cooperation with David Fujino, Executive Director, California Center for Urban Horticulture, UC Davis.

There were four treatment levels: 80%, 60%, 40%, and 20% of ET0, corresponding to high, moderate, moderate-low, and low irrigation levels, as described in The Water Use Classification of Landscape Species IV (WUCOLS IV, 2014).

The test result states the first thing to note about Kurapia’s its vigor. It also discusses that during the deficit irrigation portion of the trials the second year, there were no significant differences in growth between treatments when measured as an overall plant growth index or a relative index. The quality of the plant was not significantly affected by irrigation level either.

Kurapia shows extreme adaptability to irrigation levels, but due to its high performance level at the lowest irrigation rate in this trial, it recommends that, once established, it be irrigated at the 20% level and no more than 40% level of ET0, as additional water does not represent a significant gain in appearance or size. These recommendations are based on using drip irrigation in a clay-loam soil, and may not be reproducible in lighter soils or with the use of overhead spray irrigation.