A2o— Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 9,1981
BY JOYCE BUPP
Staff Correspondent
GAITHERSBURG, Md. - The
grass is always greener at Summit
Hall Turf Farm.
Summit Hall was the nation’s
first commercial turf farm, today
encompassing over a thousand
acres cropped to a carpet of green
velvet destined to become golf
courses, athletic fields and pic
turesque lawns.
Founder of the innovative sod
operation is William Wilmot, who
says he’s “just a town boy from
Bethesda.” But in the mid 1940’5,
this town boy entrepreneur took an
old farm homestead, whose white
colonial home was once com
mandeered during the Civil War by
General Jubil Early and his
Confederate troops, and on its
acres pioneered the Maryland turf
cropping industry.
“There was no such thing as turk
production in those days,” says
Wilmot in his gentle southern
drawl. “The small quantities of sod
that were used came from a dairy
or sheep farm, where a particular
strip of pasture that was extra lush
and thick happened to catch a
landscaper’s eye. Sheep pastures
made especially good quality sod,
because all the little hoofs would
tamp the sod tightly and their close
grazing made the top thick.”
After World War n, Wilmot
returned to Maryland, following a
period of employment on a western
ranch, and became involved in
helping establish an acre of sod
that had been donated by land
scapers to beautify the grounds of
the Montgomery County Fair.
His ranch experience had taught
Wilmot that beef was scarce, and
the price high, following the war,
and an idea clicked in his thoughts.
Why not raise turf grasses in
rotation with pasturing beef cat
tle?
Wilmot began hunting area golf
courses, not with a bag of clubs
slung on his back, but instead
seeking information from the
greenskeepers on the best types of
grasses for putting greens and
fairways.
He also spent hours at the turf
gardens planted by scientists at
the USDA’s Research Center at
Beltsville, Maryland. There he
gathered information on improved
golf course species, like U-3
Bermuda, and creeping ber
tgrasses, which had been
developed from outstanding
German parent strains and could
be manicured into excellent golf
putting greens.
Summit Hall established itself as
a turf precedent setter when the
firm became the first handler of
Merion bluegrass sod.
Wilmot had become acquainted
A turf harvester gently picks the sod lengths pack the pieces of living carpet into stacks for
up on a chain conveyor*while crew members mechanical loading.
Wilmot builds empire out of sod
with Joe Valentine, the greens called back for Summit Hall to roll
keeper at the Menon Cncket Club, ou t S(K i a t the Capitol, around the
outside Philadelphia, and learned Lincoln Memorial, at Arlington
of a lush strain of grass that per- National Cemetery. Wilmot’s
formed well in hot weather. Penn grasses also beautify the
State turf researcher, Dr. Bert Washington, D.C. embassies of
Musser, also took an interest in the Germany, Pakistan, and Por
promising bluegrass and began tugal, as well as numerous country
using it in testing studies. clubs, amusement parks and in-
Through the interest of these ' dustry headquarters,
men Menu' ’ named in it was while he was studying turf
honor of the site where the parent pj o ts a t BeltsviUe, in 1948, that
strains had been found, became a william Wilmot first heard of
standard of quality to measure Meyer Zoysia grass,
bluegrass. Wilmot credits Penn x hardy perennial, Zoysia was
State and it’s turf researchers for discovered in Korea in 1904 by
continuing as forerunners in the government researcher Frank
industry. Meyer, who brought the first
In 1950, being the only real sample plants to the United States,
commercial growers of turf Zoysia forms a tight, compact turf,
grasses. Summit Hall was able to highly resistant to heat, and
obtain half of the hundred pounds retains its lush, carpet-like cushion
of precious seed of the new feel e ven when it turns tan with
bluegrass strain. It became the cold weather dormancy,
backbone of Summit Hall’s Zoysia is a vegetative grass,
business. rejuvenating itself from sprigs, or
“We weren’t —and still aren’t
that interested in being big, just
better,” has been the philosophy of
Wilmot and his Summit Hall firm.
That insistence on quality has
earned Summit Hall some rather
unusual business contacts.
For instance, in 1953 a complete
renovation of the White House and
its surrounding grounds was un
derway. While then - President
Harry Truman moved temporarily
to the Blair House so the White
House interiors could be
redecorated, Summit Hall turf
crews were called in to change the
mansion’s patchy grass into a
solid, thick green lawn.
Greening the nation’s capital
didn’t stop at the edge of the White
House lawn. Park Service officials
Instant lawn? Frank Wilmot examines strips of
bluegrass freshly harvested and field stacked for
shipment to retail garden and landscape centers in
Washington, D.C. and Baltimore.
plugs, and doesn’t reproduce true
to seed. In 1948, Wdmot obtained a
scarce bushel-basket supply of the
first Zoysia sprigs released by
USDA and planted them in a patch
at the Gaithersburg farm.
Today, Summit Hall is known as
the “Home of Meyer Z-52 Zoysia,
the plug-in grass.” Millions of
homeowners across the nation
purchase the living grass plugs
from mail-order ads in garden
publications and newspapers, and
Zoysia sod is also available for
immediate lawn covering, all
tracing back to those first sprigs of
the grass WDmot obtained in 1948.
In the early 1950'5, the nation
was recuperating from the post
war years and homeowners were
taking an interest in property
From an isolated waterfowl refuge area along the Potomac
River valley sprouts the unexpected sign welcoming visitors
to the Potomac Valley farm of the Summit Hill turf operation.
beautification.A fluke promotional when members of the program’s
incident put Summit Hall’s Meyer regular singing group, “The
Z-52 Zoysia plugs before a Mariners,” lamented on the air
nationwide audience of lawn one day their frustration with
growers looking for a tough, easy- growing lawns of crabgrass.
to-care-for grass. , One of Wilmot’s customers
“The Arthur Godfrey Show” was mentioned the broadcast, and a
just beginning its slide from the top Summit Hall salesman was
of the fledgling television hi- (Turn to Page A2l)
dustry’s ratings, in April of 1954, ,
strips .
sod with a sharp knife that neatly slices a half-inch of root
system off the top of the soil. At set intervals, depending on
customer orders, the machine will also cut the sod strip to
convenient lengths.
Stacks of turf, like so many blocks or.bricks, go from fiel
transport by forklift.. ,
V>- / jt "