Additional Resources
Home Lawn
The Lawn Bible: How to Keep it Green, Groomed, and Growing Every Season of the Year by David R. Mellor
Everyone wants a green lawn, but how do you actually get one? Bags of fertilizer? Weed killer Sod? What about mowing? Everyone knows how to, but do you really know when to? Fenway Park's master groundskeeper David Mellor does. He's been caring for some of the nicest lawns around for years. In The Lawn Bible, Mellor offers you everything you need to know about lawn care for your part of the country, including planting, mowing, feeding, and troubleshooting, as well as tips, illustrations, and anecdotes. Whether your yard is full shade, full sun, or something in between, David Mellor will help you transform it into the greenest grass of your dreams.
Picture Perfect: Mowing Techniques for Lawns, Landscapes, and Sports by David R. Mellor
Now you can transform your sports field or clubhouse lawn into an envy-grabbing work of optic art. In this book, David Mellor shares the turf mowing and maintenance secrets that have made him one of the leading creators of elaborate patterns used on athletic turf nationwide. Articles about Mellor's work have been published in the New York Times and USA Today, and he is currently the director of grounds for the Boston Red Sox Baseball Club. In Picture Perfect, Mellor gives you the benefit of his years of experience along with simple-to-use techniques for creating playing fields that are without doubt a cut above the rest.
Soil Quality Test Kit Guide: "The Soil Quality Test Kit Guide describes procedures for 12 on-farm tests, an interpretive section for each test, data recording sheets, and a section on how to build your own kit."
Soil Quality and Testing: Information about soil health and testing from the United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library.
Perseverance / Mental Health
One Base at a Time: How I Survived PTSD and Found My Field of Dreams
David R. Mellor is the Senior Director of Grounds for the Boston Red Sox Baseball team at Fenway Park where he oversees everything that involves the playing field. This includes anything from games and events, to field maintenance.
As the leading innovator of elaborate patterns used on athletic turf, and turf in general articles about David’s work have been published in the New York Times and USA Today and he has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including ESPN's E:60 Fenway Keeper, the TODAY show, CBS Sunday Morning, and WEEI Sports Radio. His mowing patterns have been featured in the American Folk Art Museum and an international art exhibit. David has published two books on gardening and horticulture, Picture Perfect: Mowing Techniques for Lawns, Landscapes, and Sports (Hardcover, Wiley, 2001), and The Lawn Bible: How to Keep It Green, Groomed, and Growing Every Season of the Year (Paperback, Hyperion, 2003), both of which continue to be bestsellers in Amazon.com’s Home & Garden category. Picture Perfect is considered the text book for lawn patterns. He has co-authored or contributed to eleven other books.
David has cared for some of the greenest lawns in the nation—the ballparks used by the California Angels, San Francisco Giants, Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Brewers, and of course, sixteen years with the Boston Red Sox. He has thirty-two seasons of Major League Baseball experience during which he also worked eight years for the Green Bay Packers games at Milwaukee’s County Stadium.
David considers himself one of the luckiest people in the world, living by the old baseball saying, “one base at a time.” He buys a lottery ticket anytime the jackpot rises over one hundred million dollars as the statistics of winning millions of dollars is more likely than the chance of being hit by two different cars in two different cities.