Florida grass is different from other grasses around the country. Sure, it has a reputation of being a tough customer on mower decks. In the peak growing season, it also grows like there is no tomorrow. As head of the lawn maintenance department for Del Tura and Del Vera Country Clubs in North Fort Myers, Phil Di Bernardo knows that for a fact. "Sometimes I swear you can sit and watch the grass grow. It's got to grow an inch a day," he tells.
With aggressive growing conditions like that and 1,200 homes in Del Tura and 270 in Del Vera to maintain, Di Bernardo can't afford the luxury of watching the grass grow.
Instead, he has to keep his crews out there mowing. To keep pace in the summer, that means sometimes mowing six days a week and always mowing at peak operating efficiency.
It's simple, explains Di Bernardo, an eight-year veteran at Del Tura. "We have a system." As he explains it, the system is more than a machine, it's several machines and a technique that works.
The Machines
In 1986, Di Bernardo moved to Florida from the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Tonawanda where he had worked in a machine shop for better than 30 years. A layoff forced his early retirement, but retirement wasn't what he had planned at all. He and his wife moved to Del Tura on July 16. Phil says on the 28th, he was working for the maintenance department mowing lawns. "I expected to do this until I found something else to do," he recalls. Something else came along quickly. He was promoted to a group leader, and when his boss left, he was asked to manage the maintenance department.
At the time, Del Tura was in the middle of its growth spurt. Approximately 550 homes out of the current 1,200 were completed. Phil had 13 people working for him, and he knew that things had to change to keep up with projected growth.
One of his first changes was to substitute Walker mowers for the club's wide area mowers.
"When I first came to Del Tura, there were two Walker mowers," he tells. "Now there are 17; 13 at Del Tura and four at Del Vera. I found that it was more efficient to have the smaller riders mow everything, from the front and back side of the homes to the common areas and fields.
"Just from the repair factor alone," he adds, "it made sense to go with one brand name machine. As far as the Walkers go, there isn't a machine out there that beats them for these types of lots. I know that because I always try out different machines, just in case there is one better and faster. There isn't."
The System
Watching the Del Tura crews work is like watching "poetry in motion." There doesn't seem to be a wasted breath as crews and machines purr through the yards and open areas.
As described by Di Bernardo, a mowing team is really four crews, comprised of eight Walker mowers. Each crew operates two mowers. A crew member operating an edger leads the team into action, the mowers follow up, followed by the weed trimmer crew and the blowers.
The mowing crews work in tandem, each taking on successive yards. One crew member will do the back of one yard, the other the front, and the one who finishes first does the side. When the lawn is finished the crew "leap frogs" to the next available yard.
The technique allows one crew to "do a house" in six minutes. On average, notes Di Bernardo, a mower can do 27 houses a day which translates into 54 houses per crew per day. That's a lot of grass.
Crews gain more than a little speed by not collecting clippings, explains Di Bernardo. Each Walker is equipped with a 42-inch mulching deck that uniformly trims the St. Augustine grass to 4 inches high. Three mowers are held back in spare to act as quick substitutes for ones that go down on the job. With that many mowers and that much lawn to mow on a daily basis, breakdowns occur.
In the summer, Del Tura crews get to work at 7:00 a.m. and work until 4:30 p.m. On Friday, they are scheduled to work only until noon. The extra half day is built in to accommodate rain days. And so are Saturdays if need be, points out Di Bernardo. But if the work is done, maintenance crews can string together a longer weekend. Not bad for mowing in Florida during the peak growing season.
The Place
Del Tura and Del Vera country clubs are termed adult communities. Del Tura is the older of the two. In addition to having 1,200 homes, the community sports 27 holes of golf, two tennis courts, a shuffleboard, croquet court, five pools and a clubhouse with two ballrooms.
Del Vera, just across the main road, will eventually be bigger than Del Tura. It will have more homes and even more amenities than its predecessor, notes Di Bernardo.
If it's not challenging enough to work with some of the toughest grass in the country during peak growing season, Di Bernardo finds himself working for a company that has aggressive growth plans of its own. Does the combination make him nostalgic for Buffalo? Not at all because like Buffalo, Florida has winters, too, when the grass slows and so does the work. And Di Bernardo hasn't been away that long to forget what winter is like in Buffalo.
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