I-Corps: Customer discovery to explore Wildflower Turf's rapid meadow technology for the US market

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to enable more effective commercialization of a sustainable lawn alternative in the form of wildflower sod. Grass lawns are ubiquitous in the continental US covering an estimated 40 million acres of land, an area more than three times that of any other crop, including corn, soy and wheat. While grass lawns are beloved by American landowners, they are expensive, requiring more water, pesticide and fertilizer inputs than any other crop. These inputs degrade waterways and create biological deserts. In response, there is a growing call for sustainable lawn alternatives with an emphasis on native wildflower meadows. Despite the demand for meadowscapes, grass only turf continues to dominate the US landscape, in part, because the United States (US) does not have dependable, effective tools for meadow establishment. Introduction of wildflower sod/turf products to the US market will contribute to desired societal outcomes; such as meeting objectives mandated by state and federal water quality policies and initiatives, increasing biodiversity and helping ensure the health of pollinating insect communities, which provide food security through the pollination of wild and cultivated crops. This I-Corps project will advance the teams knowledge of potential barriers to widespread adoption of wildflower meadows. While the ecological benefits of wildflower meadows are fairly well understood, few studies have investigated meadow implementation from the perspective of land managers, landscape professionals and communities. Understanding the market obstacles of replacing high input lawns with sustainable flowering meadows is the first step in finding viable solutions. The technology being pursued is a biodiverse meadow sod comprised of native grasses and wildflowers. Conceptually, it is similar to traditional sod in that the turf is moveable and easy to install. The US team has partnered with a UK company which developed the production system on which the new technology is based, and has been the leading supplier of wildflower turf in Great Britain since 2003. The new IP will include adapting the UK growing system to 1) work with US plant species and climates, and 2) development of native seed mixes that grow well in the production system and that will provide the desired aesthetics for an urban settingThis award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.