All posts tagged: grass

American Grass Could Ruin the World Cup

American Grass Could Ruin the World Cup

Published by Daniella Wilson

Every time the United States hosts a major international soccer tournament, the world’s finest players unite to complain about our god-awful fields. At the 2024 Copa América, the Argentine goalkeeper Emi Martínez—widely regarded as one of the best in the world—described the field in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium as both “a trampoline” and “a disaster.” Last year, Chelsea’s captain, Reece James, who played a Club World Cup match in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, called the pitch bad for the joints and the quality of gameplay. This year, MetLife Stadium will host the single biggest match in soccer: the World Cup final. The United States’ poor record on grass has prompted fans and soccer analysts alike to speculate that turf will be the villain of this year’s tournament. FIFA doesn’t allow professional games it hosts to be played on fully synthetic surfaces, but the United States’ largest stadiums are mostly designed with artificial turf for NFL games. So, shortly after Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. won their joint bid to host the 2026 World Cup, FIFA began …

Why your dog eats grass

Why your dog eats grass

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. If your dog stops mid-walk to chew on a patch of lawn, you’ve probably wondered whether something is wrong. Of the delicious food options available to them, why would they choose leafy, bitter grass? Many owners assume the worst: that the dog has an upset stomach and is eating grass to make itself throw up. Dr. Melissa Bain doesn’t see it that way. “My dog enjoys it every day,” says Bain, a professor of clinical animal behavior at the University of California, Davis. “If we ever mow the grass, [he’ll] go out there and just start chomping on it.” To her, it reads as a snack, not a symptom. The idea that dogs graze to purge a sick stomach is one of the …

OsamaSon Touches Grass in a New Balenciaga Campaign

OsamaSon Touches Grass in a New Balenciaga Campaign

Published by Jenni Sidey

When the rapper OsamaSon dropped a song called “Balenciaga” in May 2024, he was confident even then that he’d someday achieve the kind of success that would, say, land him in an official Balenciaga campaign. Now, almost exactly two years later, that dream has become a reality. “I didn’t imagine it, but I kind of knew it was going to have to happen. I’ve always known how I was going to be the biggest in this shit,” he tells me. When we speak by phone, the 23-year-old South Carolinian is looking out at the view from the balcony of his Los Angeles home, where he just so happens to be waiting for an Uber to deliver a package from Balenciaga (there’s a hoodie inside) that was accidentally shipped to his other house. Nevertheless, he’s already “got hella shit in my closet from them right now.” Such are the perks of appearing in the label’s latest campaign. In an image shot in LA by his friend and frequent collaborator Morgan Maher, the musician poses in a …

Fake grass fire leaves Midland couple facing £15,000 repair bill

Fake grass fire leaves Midland couple facing £15,000 repair bill

Published by Sam Flores

A couple have spoken of their shock after a section of their property was ravaged in a catastrophic fire – triggered by their artificial lawn going up in flames. Shaun Whyatt and his partner Jenn Barnet are now facing a substantial £15,000 repair bill after hot embers from a fire bin set their fake grass alight. Fire tore through the back of their property during the early hours of 7 May following Shaun’s disposal of letters in the rear garden. Read more: Woman forced to quit city centre job after sex attack near landmark Security operative Shaun had previously doused the £20 fire bin with water, convinced he had extinguished the flames. However, hours afterwards embers leaked from tiny holes in the fire bin, setting their £1,000 synthetic turf ablaze in Arnold, Notts. The blaze spread to their property and the couple were only made aware of the fire at 3am when a neighbour hammered on their door. Fortunately, the pair managed to get out, together with their two cats, but are now confronting substantial …

The Environmental Movement Needs to Touch Grass

The Environmental Movement Needs to Touch Grass

Published by Sam Flores

Donald Trump is the most anti-environment president since “environmentalism” emerged in America. He has rescinded the “endangerment finding,” meaning that the government no longer accepts the basic truth that climate change is bad for people. He is rolling back regulations that would have protected American skies and waters from pollutants such as mercury, arsenic, “forever chemicals,” soot, and methane. And he is working to demote conservation as a priority use for the 245 million acres of land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The environmental movement—green-minded politicians, entrepreneurs, philanthropists, writers, volunteers, and advocacy organizations—has seemed ill-equipped to respond. Environmental-news headlines get little attention, court challenges play out in obscurity, and when people do protest, our air, water, forests, and oceans seem like afterthoughts amid so many other worthy causes. How did the movement lose its vibrancy? More screen time, less wild habitat available to visit, and a shift to urban living have made Americans less viscerally connected to the splendor of planet Earth. Even conservation scientists have been trapped indoors, thanks to the falling …

Perfect pitch? Grass scientists lay new grounds for World Cup ‘26

Perfect pitch? Grass scientists lay new grounds for World Cup ‘26

Published by skeptic

When soccer star Kylian Mbappé steps onto a field in the 2026 World Cup games, he won’t be thinking about the grass beneath his feet. Hopefully. Players and fans alike will be focusing on the game. But not turf specialists, especially those at the University of Tennessee (UT) and Michigan State University (MSU). They’ve been working for the past few years with FIFA. That’s the governing body for World Cup Soccer. For these researchers, the goal is to ensure the playing fields — or pitches — support the upcoming games. And what they’ve learned may pay off in better grass athletic fields everywhere. World Cup matches always take place on natural grass. Groundskeepers usually start working on the pitches six to eight months before the games. The 2022 games took place in Qatar, the 2018 games in Russia. Both times, all fields (and their stadiums) had been designed and built specifically for those tournaments. This year, none were. This bird’s-eye view of the World Cup stadium outside Los Angeles shows the midway installation of sod …

Is fake grass a bad idea? The Astroturf wars are far from over.

Is fake grass a bad idea? The Astroturf wars are far from over.

Published by skeptic

New York City has 286 municipal synthetic-­turf fields, with more under construction. In Inwood, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan, two fields were approved via Zoom meetings during the pandemic, and Massimo Strino, a local artist who makes kaleidoscopes, says he found out only when he saw signs announcing the work on one of his daily walks in Inwood Hill Park, along the Hudson River. He joined a campaign against the plan, gathering more than 4,300 signatures. “I was canvassing every weekend,” Strino says. “You can count on one hand, literally, the number of people who said they were in favor.”  But that doesn’t include the group that pushed for one of those fields in the first place: Uptown Soccer, which offers free and low-cost lessons and games to 1,000 kids a year, mostly from underserved immigrant families. “It was turning an unused community space into a usable space,” says David Sykes, the group’s executive director. “That trumped the sort of abstract concerns about the environmental impacts. I’m not an expert in artificial turf, but the …

The best lawnmowers: five favourites to keep your grass in check, tested | Gardens

The best lawnmowers: five favourites to keep your grass in check, tested | Gardens

Published by Sam Flores

Leaving your lawn to develop naturally into a meadow of pollinator-friendly wild flowers is the best option from an ecological perspective, but many of us still like to have at least a small area of grass, whether it’s to break up your flower beds or provide a space for the kids to play. And every lawn needs a mower. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Your family’s lawnmower might have been a fossil fuel-guzzling petrol beast, but today, an electric model is far more energy-efficient and kinder to the planet. I’ve tested electric mowers from five manufacturers to find out which are the best. At a glance £439.98 at Toolstation £104 at Argos £229.99 at Worx Why you should trust me I’ve been mowing lawns since I was tall enough to be dragged around the garden by my father’s noisy and smelly petrol mower in the 1980s. Apart from a short period in early adulthood when accommodation didn’t really come with gardening …

Ten English fire services tackled record number of grass, forest and crop fires in 2025 | Wildfires

Ten English fire services tackled record number of grass, forest and crop fires in 2025 | Wildfires

Published by Jenni Sidey

Ten English fire services tackled a record number of grassland, woodland and crop fires during what was the UK’s hottest spring and summer on record, figures show. In total nearly 27,000 wildfires were dealt with by fire services in England during the prolonged dry weather of 2025, according to analysis by PA Media. One fire chief said the summer was one of the most challenging that crews had ever faced and the frequency and intensity of the wildfires was putting a strain on resources. The figures, obtained through freedom of information requests, show that at least 12,454 grassland, woodland or crop fires were recorded by fire services in England in the three months from March to May 2025. This is more than four times the 2,621 incidents logged by these services in the same period in 2024 and is the highest spring total for more than a decade. Dorset and Wiltshire fire service recorded 298 incidents between March and May, its highest number for spring since comparable data began in 2011, followed by 459 in …

A guide to California Gold Rush towns Nevada City and Grass Valley

A guide to California Gold Rush towns Nevada City and Grass Valley

Published by Sam Flores

You could argue that Nevada City peaked 170 years ago, along with Charles Darwin, Herman Melville and Queen Victoria. But we’re still talking about them all. And Nevada City, 60 miles northeast of Sacramento in the Sierra foothills, is reachable without a séance. In the 1850s, it grew from a miners’ outpost into a Gold Rush boomtown of 10,000 (heavy on the bars and brothels) before anyone got around to naming that other Nevada as a territory or a state. Today it lives on as a tiny town with a lively arts scene and a liberal bent, home to about 3,200 souls. Perhaps because there’s so much to escape from these days, Nevada City and its larger, more middle-of-the-road neighbor Grass Valley have been drawing more visitors than ever lately. Nevada County’s hotel and vacation rental tax revenues have doubled in the last five years to a record high. “A lot of people are coming up from the Bay Area and settling up here because Nevada City is in a lot of ways like the …