As you settle down to watch the Euro 2016 finals over the next few weeks, the immaculate turf you see on your TV screens will probably have been created from grass seed supplied by DLF, owners of the Johnsons lawn seed retail brand.
The tournament kicks off on 10 June, when the eyes of Europe will be on the Stade de France, where France and Romania play the first match in the tournament of the year.
A world-class championship needs several hectares of hard-wearing turf. Ten stadiums in ten cities will host 51 games, with another 60 training grounds for use by 24 national teams. And at the end, when the winning team lifts the trophy, the turf of the Stade de France must still look superb.
“We are excited to contribute with our turf grasses to the majority of the French football stadiums, and we are confident, that our grass will last all the way to the final”, says Benoit Petitjean, General Manager in DLF France.
DLF turf is used in most French stadiums.
An international football tournament demands a lot from its turf and from its groundsmen. The French turf-grass register lists all the approved varieties, and ranks each one for a variety of features that groundsmen look for. The register also aggregates the feature rankings to provide an overall ranking for sports use. And the top-five ranked sports varieties were all developed by DLF researchers.
To prepare for the event, groundsmen overseeded their pitches with top-performing mixtures of perennial ryegrass from DLF brands Top Green Eurosport and Johnsons Sports Seed.
The same top grade ryegrass featured in these mixes also appears in the Johnsons Lawn Seed’s very own Turfline 2016, which is available to UK retailers, helping them to make the most of the football frenzy being whipped up ahead of the finals.
