Steve Ware recognized for Home Depot Backyard irrigation project

The mission: design and develop a highly efficient and reliable irrigation system for The Home Depot Backyard using a non-drinkable water supply.

Oh yeah, and make sure it’s complete before the Atlanta Falcons 2018 regular-season home opener at state-of-the-art Mercedes-Benz Stadium (MBS).

That was the task at hand as the 13-plus-acre greenspace/tailgating spot was under construction abutting MBS on a portion of the former Georgia Dome footprint, basically fashioning a massive park lawn on top of the imploded stadium’s rubble.

Rising to the challenge was the Georgia World Congress Center Authority’s GWCCA’s Campus Horticulturalist, Steve Ware, an STMA Editorial Committee member, and irrigation consultant Bob Scott of Irrigation Consultant Services, working on behalf of Kimley-Horn, which provided structural, traffic and civil engineering and landscape architecture design. The Home Depot Backyard opened to the public in September 2018, less than a year after the Georgia Dome was imploded.

Ware and Scott were recently recognized for their collaboration on this project, receiving an American Society of Irrigation Consultants (ASIC) Excellence In Irrigation Merit Award.

The irrigation system is fed from a cistern next to the stadium that is designed to use recycled rainwater runoff from MBS’s roof as its primary source for keeping The Home Depot Backyard’s natural turf green, backed up by wells underneath the park.