The Kentucky Bluegrass region is well known for its natural soil fertility.  It is also home to the Golden Triangle, which had the largest population gain in Kentucky based on the most recent census.  As new development occurs in this growing area, homeowners and lawn care companies will be applying fertilizers to their lawns and gardens.  These excess applications of fertilizer will put our waterways at risk of environmental contamination.  To address this concern, a team from CAFE including Brad Lee, Gregg Munshaw, Suzette Walling (Plant and Soil Sciences) and led by Rick Durham (Horticulture) developed an educational program for homeowners which included soil tests of participants lawns and public spaces within Lexington.  With a small grant from the LFUCG we sampled soils from home lawns, public parks, street medians and dog parks and analyzed them for soil test phosphorus at the UK Regulatory Services laboratory.  Results indicated that less than 5% of the soils require phosphorus for plant growth while the overwhelming majority of soil test phosphorus levels were very high.  These results were similar to a 25-year analysis of soil test phosphorus levels which showed that only 4% of lawns and gardens need phosphorus while 84% of soils test levels were high enough to pose an environmental risk.  The overwhelming majority of samples do not require any phosphorus and the phosphorus levels were high enough to pose a risk to water quality.