Carl Sawyer has been employed at the University of Rhode island’s research turf farm for 32 years.

The Providence Journal / John Freidah

A perfect lawn could someday result from a scrubby patchwork of plants growing in an experimental field at the University of Rhode Island’s Kingston campus. This lawn would stay green all summer without watering, require minimal fertilizer, and need no chemicals to combat weeds, bugs and disease. It would barely have to be mowed.

We visit this field of (homeowner) dreams, in vast open space west of the university’s Ryan Center, on a late spring day with URI scientist Rebecca Nelson Brown. Four years ago, Brown and her staff planted different varieties of grass on this quarter-acre. Since then, they’ve essentially done nothing but observe.

“This is our ‘low-input’ trial,” Brown says. “We irrigated the first year just to get the seed up and growing and since then it hasn’t had a drop of irrigation. It gets one pound of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet using organic fertilizers. That’s a very small amount. No pesticides, no weed killers, no nothing. We basically put the grass out here to see how well it can compete without a lot of help.”

Survival of the fittest, in other words.

The quarter-acre, part of the C. Richard Skogley Turfgrass Research Center, is divided into four-foot-square plots. Brown brings us to one that’s thick with weeds. Standard Kentucky bluegrass, a staple in seed mixtures sold today, was planted here.

“If you look deep down underneath,” she says, bending to push the weeds aside, “there is actually some bluegrass down there.” Not much, though. “It can’t out-compete the weeds, especially under this low fertility,” Brown says.

Certain varieties of fescues, on the other hand, have prevailed. Brown draws our attention to a virtually weed-free lush green square.

“See how dense it is?” Healthy, too. And relatively short, considering spring began weeks ago. “This is as tall as fine fescue ever gets,” the scientist says. “It’s what –– not quite knee-high? If I came through and mowed today and then did not mow again all summer, it would never even get this tall again.”

Brown moves on to a patch of familiar three-leaf plants.

“One of the things I think we’ll see more of in the lawn of the future is clover, which is actually a return to the lawn of the past. Before the 1950s, every lawn had clover.” Clover brings something special to the (lawn) party: it converts nitrogen in the air into nitrogen that nourishes grass, reducing, if not eliminating, the need for fertilizer.

We continue on through the patches, each distinctive for its color, density, height and prevalence of weeds. Seed companies and turf grass breeders supplied the seeds that Brown is testing. Some, like the Kentucky bluegrass, are available commercially today. Others, more experimental, are not on the market.

At the edge of the field, Brown points to exposed soil, on which the trial varieties are growing: an acidic mix of sand and gravel that holds water and nutrients poorly. Ill-suited for growing much of anything, this is what you commonly find in Rhode Island when topsoil has been removed. Developers often strip topsoil away when building houses, then hope for the best when starting lawns.

“They may just hydro-seed straight onto this,” Brown says, “or they may spread a little bit of topsoil like frosting on a cake and hydro-seed into that –– but in neither case do you have very good soil.”

But the best grasses don’t mind bad soil, either.

SEEDS SUPPLIED by large companies are used in the low-input trial, but they are not the only potential source of grass that could be part of the lawn of the future. Nature itself is a laboratory, as Brown’s colleague Bridget Ruemmele knows well.

Sitting in her office, Ruemmele, professor of turfgrass management, talks of the expeditions she and others have made to pastures, meadows, roadsides and woods. They hunt for the fruits of natural selection –– for grasses that, over decades or centuries, have evolved into new strains as cross-pollination shuffles genes.

“You’re always looking for something that looks nice in the wild, where it’s unmanaged,” Ruemmele says. “Old cemeteries are really great because they often do not get fertilized or mowed. You look at color, you look at aggressiveness –– does it out-compete the weeds. If you came across a huge patch, you start jumping up and down going ‘mine!’ ”

She recalls a trip to Maine several years ago. “We were on an abandoned golf course and it had velvet bentgrass, which is this lovely, lovely grass that people have mismanaged for years. There was this patch, probably 10 feet across. We were just, like, freaking out!”

Few wild specimens are immediately suited for home use, and so future candidates undergo testing –– and, often, cross-breeding.

“You may [already] have one that’s got really good disease resistance and the one you brought back may have great color but it may be susceptible to that particular disease. You cross them and try and select the ones that keep the good color and also have the disease resistance or insect resistance or whatever you’re trying to combine.”

Ruemmele’s golf course grass specimens were lost when she went on medical leave, but others from the wild have panned out–– including a variety that an earlier professor found in his own yard that eventually was sold commercially, Ruemmele says.

DATA FROM the low-input trial is sent to the companies that supplied the seeds, Brown says. They will ultimately decide the average homeowner’s lawn of the future.

It almost certainly will grow from clover and a mix of grasses, not a single variety –– and the blend will vary depending on location and climate. As they have for decades, market forces will have influence.

Lawn economics came seriously into play during the post-World War II period, when suburbia spread and homeowners began to covet what they saw on golf courses, sports fields, and estates. In that pre-Earth Day era, the road to perfection went through chemicals and tools –– lots of chemicals, lots of tools. Companies such as industry-leader Scotts were rewarded with generous profits.

“Lawn-care stuff has traditionally been marketed through hardware stores rather than real garden centers, nurseries, or garden seed companies, and to men rather than women,” Brown says.

Kentucky bluegrass and other varieties commonly found at big-box outlets can be produced cheaply in large quantity, Brown says, which has appealed to the Scotts of the world.

“Many of the lower-input grasses produce less seed per acre than the traditional species,” Brown says. “This, combined with lower demand, has led companies to put less effort into producing seed of the alternative grasses, which results in short supply, high prices, and a decrease in demand. It is a vicious circle.”

But the future is green, literally, and the circle is likely to be broken.

“It’s going to be a gradual groundswell,” Brown says, “as consumers become more interested in things like organic lawn maintenance, which is one of the hottest new areas. That puts pressure on the seed companies: they see there may, in fact, be a market for some of these varieties. And so they’ll put more resources into developing them.”

gwmiller@projo.com