From today’s front page of the L.A. Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-spray-painted-grass2-2009may02,0,7272444,full.story

The Insta-Green crew arrived on Peppermint Drive in green caps and green shirts, carrying buckets of green paint.

Their mission?

Convert a long-dead lawn into a lush patch of grass worthy of any golf course or polo field.

Thanks to the city of Perris, David Milligan is raking in a different kind of green. Not long ago the town hired his company to treat an epidemic of dead lawns fronting its more than 1,100 foreclosed homes.

So far Milligan has painted about 20 lawns, charging between $400 and $700 each. After the right shade is selected, the paint is sprayed on dead grass and dirt, giving the illusion of a healthy lawn for three to four months. The paint, said Milligan, is green on more than one level. It’s made of natural, biodegradable ingredients.

After clearing the weeds, team member Brian Roberts armed himself with a long, narrow sprayer. As a sputtering pump churned a bucket of paint in the driveway, he went to work. The transformation was immediate. Inch by inch, foot by foot, brown scrub gave way to emerald-green grass. The lawn was still dead, but vibrantly so.

Roberts worked in the mortgage industry before business dried up.

“Maybe this is my way of giving back,” he said. “Maybe I put these people in this home. This may be some sort of hell for me.”

Milligan says lawn painting may be the ultimate green job. He even wonders if there’s a television show in it.  “I’m thinking, ‘Pimp My Lawn,’ ” he said. “You know how we could get something like that started?”

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