It's time to compare notes and put together better action plans to meet the issues threatening the growth (in some instances survival) of the chemical lawn care industry. In particular we need better plans for issues that pop up on the local and state levels.

For this reason we're partnering with The Professional Landcare Network (PLANET) in a special "Grassroots Lawn Care Pesticide Summit" to precede the Legislative Day on the Hill and Renewal & Remembrance at Arlington National Cemetery on Sunday, July 23. The Summit will take place 2 – 5 p.m. at the Holiday Inn Capitol Hill, and just before PLANET's Welcome Reception at the hotel.

It will feature a panel of lawn care experts from the United States and Canada. It will illuminate the most challenging issues facing the chemical lawn industry and shed light on how we should prepare and meet new ones as they arise.

The furor over the use of lawn care chemicals continues to spread over Canada like a rash this spring. It shows no signs of slowing down, never mind going away. Things are nasty north of the border and getting nastier.

By contrast the lawn care industry in the United States, by most indications, is off to good start. While the Canadian press is ringing with comment on the use of chemical control products for so-called non-essential or "cosmetic" uses (95% of the criticism aimed at the lawn application industry), the U.S. scene is relatively quiet. Unnervingly quiet, say some U.S. lawn care business owners.

The fact is that the Canada lawn care professional and his/her U.S. counterpart work in two different worlds. The former allows towns and cities to make their own rules concerning pesticide use; the latter decided long ago that those decisions belong in the hands of the federal and, to a much lesser degree, state governments.

The fear, at least among the U.S. lawn application fraternity, is that the two worlds will become one, the Maple Leaf world. In Canada about 100 villages and cities have banned or severely restricted the use of chemical control products for turf care.

Canada's a great country and a wonderful neighbor but few people in the U.S. application business can be happy with what's happening up there. At the Summit on July 23 we'll find out what went wrong there (and in several locations in the United States too). Then we'll start making plans to keep them from happening here or spreading.

If you're a lawn care business owner and you're thinking about participating in this year's Arlington Cemetery or Legislative Day events, now you have an extra reason for coming to the nation's capital on July 23.