Since the moment he first stepped foot on a golf course more than 20 years ago for a summer job, Kevin Mercer knew he had found his life's calling in turf and landscape management.
Two decades and many jobs later, Mercer wants to give back to the industry that has given him so much.
Now the grounds manager at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, Mercer has penned a book on his life's work that he hopes will help his colleagues become better turf managers.
Titled "Environmental Solutions For Grounds Management" the book is scheduled to be released Sept. 2.
"This book was intended to help the grounds manager, golf course superintendent and sports turf manager to help them with today's environmental impacts without changes or altering their grounds maintenance program," Mercer said in the foreword. "I wanted to help the green industry tackle today's environmental challenges head-on."
The book includes chapters titled stormwater management, biodiversity habitat and carbon fertility and composting.
The chapter on stormwater management includes industry lingo and definitions, information on the country's 18 major river basins, practical solutions for reducing stormwater runoff and managing nutrients, why buffer strips are important and how to create them.
The author discusses the importance of pollinators and creating habitat for them and other beneficial species in chapter 3. That section includes a bee identification guide, a list of beneficial insects, installing bat and bird houses and minimizing pesticide use through mechanical weed control.
The book, which will be available through traditional outlets including Amazon and Barnes & Noble and through Mercer's web site, concludes with innovative approaches to soil amendments and composting in Chapter 4. The section includes information on the benefits of composting, vermicomposting and compost tea and how to get started with each.
Mercer's school-of-hard knocks career in turf began when he was in high school working summers on a nine-hole layout in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After studying landscape design at Montgomery County College in Rockville, Maryland, he worked from 2000 to 2004 as the assistant superintendent at the golf course at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
Since then, he has been the grounds manager at a handful of colleges, including Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. He also was an instructor at the College of Southern Maryland, where he taught classes in sports turf management, principles of turfgrass management and environmental landscaping.
He has been the grounds and landscape manager at Denison in Ohio since 2017 and also is the owner of his own company — Grounds Management Environmental Solutions — through which he teaches grounds maintenance and team-building, morale, increased productivity and job satisfaction through a series of workshops.
At Denison he is responsible for managing all campus grounds and works with other departments, including athletic field work.
In 2022, Mercer was named the winner of the Professional Grounds Management Society's Special Award of Distinguished Service, while his team won the Grand Award — the society's most prestigious award — in the small college category.
"I do not have a Ph.D., master’s or even a bachelor’s degree," Mercer wrote, "I have something far more worthy, which is over 30 years of failures and successes in the grounds maintenance profession."