TOCA Talk Spring 2025
TOCA Talk is proudly sponsored by EnP and Advanced Turf Solutions.
EnP has been Engineering Optimal Plant Health™ for nearly 30 years, manufacturing specialty fertilizers
under two brands: Foliar-Pak, and Age Old Nutrients.
Advanced Turf Solutions (ATS) is a green industry distributor that provides fertilizer, pesticides, grass seed, ice melt, and
more to professionals in the golf, lawn care, and sports turf markets.
Because EnP and ATS professionals believe that collaboration and the exchange of ideas are essential for innovation, they are proud to support the Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association (TOCA).
Thank you, members of the Turf and Ornamental Communicators Association, for supporting this industry through your information, education, and outreach.
President’s Message
Hello TOCA members!
By Kristine White, TOCA President
Living in the Midwest can be tough during the cold winter months, but as March rolls around, the anticipation of spring and sunshine brings a welcome sense of excitement – and with it, the upcoming TOCA Annual Meeting!
Our annual conference is happening April 29 – May 1, in Charleston, S.C., and we’ve packed the agenda with our typical mix of education, networking and fun. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or this is your first time joining us for the meeting, there’s something for everyone!
Here’s a sneak peek at what’s in store:
Day 1: Let’s Dive Right In!
We kick off with Words Create Worlds: The Value of Inclusive Communication in the 21st Century. Next, we’ll dive into two insightful sessions from the Poynter Institute. Making Hard Facts Easy Reading will teach you how to simplify complex info, while Everyday Tools to Generate Better Stories will spark your creativity and take your storytelling to the next level.
For our annual tour, we’ll board a bus to the historic Middleton Place, America’s oldest landscaped gardens. We’ll meet with the head groundskeeper for an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at their operations. Afterward, you can walk around the Middleton Place grounds before heading to our service project at Burke and Simons Pickney School. At the school, we’ll be doing some work on the grounds, including raking, weeding, spreading mulch and planting. Please note that after visiting Middleton Place, you can choose to stay on the bus and return directly to the hotel instead of going to the service project.
We’ll cap off the day with our silent auction, so be sure to bring your best bidding skills!
Day 2: Communication Mastery and a Touch of Fun
If you’re interested, start your day with the TOCA Trotters Fun Run/Walk – a great way to get the blood pumping before the real fun begins. Then we’ll kick off the day’s education with Breathe, Listen, Adapt: Mastering High-Stakes Communication.
Right before lunch, we’ll dive into a Sod/End User Panel: Exploring Sod From All Angles, giving you the chance to hear directly from the field. From growing sod to maintaining the turf, you’ll hear from several end-users and experts. We’ll end our educational sessions with two interactive artificial intelligence (AI) sessions. AI Roundtable Discussions will explore topics from AI legal considerations to using AI for research. Then, we’ll have some hands-on fun during the AI Problem-Solving Workshop where you’ll use AI to tackle various challenges with other attendees.
We’ll cap things off with our Communications Contest Awards Ceremony and Dinner, along with the Hall of Fame inductions.
Be sure to register and book your hotel room ASAP, if you haven’t done so already. I can’t wait to see everyone in Charleston!
The charm of Charleston: Silent auction update
We are quickly approaching the 36th TOCA Annual Meeting in Charleston, S.C., and we couldn’t be more excited to share our plans for the silent auction with y’all. We hope this year will be the best yet and that we’ll raise an impressive sum for the association!
For this year’s silent auction, we are elevating our host city to be our auction theme. Charleston has a lot to offer for everyone and the items that will be waiting for your bids will definitely demonstrate the personality of this southern charm. If you are looking to take home a piece of the area, we’ll have items ranging from cookbooks to brewery gift baskets to local, handmade items.
If you are looking to contribute to the silent auction, we welcome any donations that you are willing to contribute. Branded merchandise, drinkware and technology items are always a hit. However, we want to make this as easy on you as possible, so if you want us to do the work for you, we have items ready to be sponsored. You contribute the funds and we’ll take care of the rest!
Items available for sponsorship, with prices ranging from $5-$250, include:
- Collectible “Coastal Carolina” coffee table book
- Choice of Charleston/Southern-themed culinary gift baskets
- Charleston Cookbooks gift pack
- Charleston Candle Co. gift set
- Handmade Sweetgrass basket
- Handmade Sweetgrass coaster set
- Curated brewery package
- Curated distillery package
- Curated BBQ package
- Charleston-Opoly board game
- Virtual cooking class
- Local sports team gift package
- Various gift cards to national retailers (Apple, Target, Golf Galaxy, etc.)
If you want to sponsor any of these items or need more information, please reach out to Tim Merath at: tmerath@epiccreative.com. We are also open to any additional ideas! If you’re ready to contribute to the auction, follow this link to view the donation form.
We look forward to seeing the bid sheets fill up and appreciate everything you all do to support TOCA!
Run to the Pineapple
By Scott Covelli, EPIC Creative
As professional communicators and problem solvers, we’re always looking for ways to exercise our brains to be ready for the next creative challenge work throws at us. But one way to exercise our brains – that we sometimes forget – is to exercise our bodies! Exercise of any form can help us think more clearly and be better communicators.
In fact, according to the American Sports & Fitness Association, “Exercise gives your brain more blood flow, oxygen and nutrients. This increases oxygen flow to the brain, which can help improve memory and focus. Additionally, exercising helps your brain eliminate toxins that can impede creativity.”
That’s a lot of science, which can be boring. But at TOCA, we not only find a way to make science interesting, we strive to make everything social and fun, and exercise is no different. At our annual meeting each year, we do a group “fun run/walk” near our hotel to see more of a new city and get a good sweat in. More importantly, it’s an opportunity for us to connect, network and engage in meaningful conversations while staying active together.
This year is extra special because we’ll be running/walking to a Charleston landmark – the famous Pineapple Fountain. The run/walk will start at the hotel lobby on Thursday, May 1, at 7 a.m., and all ages and skill levels are welcome. It’s all about getting outside and being healthy together.
But don’t wait until the TOCA Annual Meeting to connect with our running crew. If you use the Strava fitness app, be sure to join our “TOCA Trotters” group and cheer on your TOCA friends in their daily workouts.
If you’re interested in the TOCA Annual Meeting Fun Run/Walk, pack some running shoes and we’ll see you in Charleston!
A Legendary Hole is Born – Gardner Award
Best International Entry
By Scott MacCallum, Turf Matters
We were delighted to win the Gardner Award for Best International Entry for the article “A Legendary Hole is Born” in the July August 2023 issue of Turf Matters. It marked the fifth time Turf Matters received the Gardner Award since 2019 – three times for writing and twice for design.
If you think that we must have the winning formula, you would be wrong. There is no such formula. It’s just a case of producing the best quality work all the time; and if it clicks with the judges, so be it.
The background to last year’s winning article was The Open Golf Championship at Royal Liverpool Golf Club in 2023. You’ll note that in Britain, we don’t call it the British Open!
I must confess, Royal Liverpool, or Hoylake as it is better known, is not my favorite Open venue, but it has a rich history. Among its Champions have been Walter Hagen in 1924; Bobby Jones in 1930 on his way to the Grand Slam, and Tiger Woods in 2006, his last Open win.
I always found the course, with its internal out-of-bounds, a little uninspiring, despite some fabulous linksy holes in the middle. I was therefore intrigued and delighted to learn of a new hole that was being built in time for the Open. (It would have been the 2022 Open, but COVID delayed it.) It was designed by respected golf course architect Martin Ebert.
So a couple of months before the Championship, a cameraman and I visited the course and met with James Bledge, the extremely talented and media savvy course manager, who is known universally as “Bledge.” We conducted an interview on the green of this wonderful new hole – a very short par 3 named “Little Eye,” with a raised green surrounded by bunkers. It was to be the 17th hole during The Open and, particularly in a wind, make any score from one to a 10 a possibility.
As it turned out, there was every score from one, by Australian Travis Smyth during the second round, to a triple bogey six with a magnificent seven players cursing their departure from the green all the way to the 18th tee.
Subsequently, there was a lot of criticism of the hole – particularly by the Royal Liverpool membership who felt it was too penal too late in the round. Whether that will impede its elevation to legendary status, only time will tell; but it is unlikely that it will be seen in the same class as some of the more established par-3s around – The Postage Stamp at Royal Troon; the 17th at Pebble Beach; the 12th at Augusta National and the 16th at Sawgrass – but you never know. Another Hoylake Open might be enough to secure its status.
The hole has since become the 15th hole and some of the bunkering has been removed to give a fighting chance to those who don’t have aspirations to win an Open Championship. That fact that they have succeeded can be demonstrated by the fact that, although I am by some measure a better writer than I am a golfer, made par on the only occasion I have played the hole.
I do believe the fact that the hole was so new, so novel and so high profile, it gave the article a profile that it might not have had if it had been any other hole, on any other golf course ahead of any other golf tournament. People wanted to read about it and I felt that with such an interest behind the article, it would make it an ideal entry for the TOCA Communications Awards.
And so, it came to pass and now I have three plaques on the wall behind me when I’m conducting Zoom interviews from my office.
The Benefits of Natural Turfgrass Video – Gardner Award
Best Long Video/DVD
By Valerie Smith, Sod Solutions
My project is a video titled, “The Benefits of Natural Turfgrass,” produced under Sod Solutions, Inc. This video was designed to educate a broad audience, including homeowners, urban planners and green industry professionals, about natural turfgrass’s environmental and practical advantages compared to artificial alternatives.
The initiative aims to refresh and deepen the understanding of natural turfgrass by presenting updated, research-based information. This includes its benefits for air quality, water conservation and biodiversity support. A primary objective is to position Sod Solutions as a trusted authority in the conversation about natural landscaping solutions, underlining our dedication to sustainable industry practices.
In 2022, I was filling in for our Executive Director of Research Roberto Gurgel to give an hour-long webinar on “The Best Turfgrasses for Texas” to the Bexar County Master Gardeners when I realized there wasn’t a ton of easy-to-understand information on natural turfgrass. Having launched an educational blog called Sod University, which won a first-place TOCA award in 2022, I saw a unique opportunity to create our own video. This project aligns with the views of Tobey Wagner, president of Sod Solutions, who emphasizes the importance of educating the public about the environmental advantages of natural turfgrass in our 
industry. The growing importance of video content for user engagement and SEO (search engine optimization) made this an ideal time to develop our video. Collaboration was key in bringing this project to life. I worked closely with my colleague Justin Wallace to finalize the script and partnered with videographer Chris Hanclosky to produce the video.
What distinguished our entry from others was our commitment to education over commercial gain. We invested our resources into discussing natural grass’s essential role in the environment, rather than promoting our products. Our focus was on educating the green industry and the public about the environmental benefits of natural turfgrass and addressing widespread misconceptions. By emphasizing that grass, often overlooked as a simple plant, plays a significant role in our environment. We demonstrated a genuine dedication to advancing the use of improved turfgrasses globally.
To learn more about the environmental benefits of natural turfgrass, visit our blog on Sod University:
👉 The Benefits of Natural Turfgrass
2025 TOCA Annual Meeting Hotel Booking Link Open!
Make your reservations by April 6 to receive the exclusive TOCA discount!
BOOK NOW!
