Preserving Stadium Grass: Turning Championship Field Turf Into Resin Sports Memorabilia

Most days at Wild Coast, our studio is filled with wedding bouquets, memorial flowers, and pieces from life’s biggest celebrations.

And then sometimes, a chunk of a football field shows up.

Preserving flowers will always be at the heart of what we do, but some of our favorite projects are the ones that make us stop and say, Okay…how are we going to preserve this?

Recently, we’ve had the chance to work with real stadium grass from two major sporting events: The 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship and the 2026 FIFA World Cup Bronze Final match at Hard Rock Stadium.

Yes, the actual grass from the field.

And as it turns out, preserving turf isn’t all that different from preserving a bouquet. It just comes with a lot more dirt.

A Different Kind of Sports Memorabilia

There are plenty of ways to remember a great game. Tickets get framed. Jerseys get signed. Footballs go into display cases.

But owning a piece of the actual field where the game happened? That’s a little harder to come by.

That’s what makes these projects so interesting to us.

We use the same whole-object resin preservation techniques we’ve developed for flowers and other keepsakes, but instead of preserving a bouquet, we’re preserving the ground where the game was played.

Like so many of the unusual pieces that have come through our studio, the first one started with a question:

“Can you preserve this?”

We get that question more often than you might think. You can see some of the other unexpected things we’ve worked with in Custom Preservation Projects We Said Yes To

Our First Stadium Grass Project: A Miami College Football Playoff

Earlier this year, a piece of field grass from the Indiana vs. University of Miami playoff matchup made its way to our studio.

The customer didn’t just want the grass preserved. They wanted the finished pieces to tell the story of the game.

We created two 12x16 resin blocks with black backgrounds. Along with the turf, we included ticket stubs, the game-day score, team logos, and a photo of the winning touchdown.

The really cool part? The photo was positioned to correspond with the area of the field where the grass had actually been cut.

This is one of the things we love about custom preservation. A piece doesn’t have to hold just one object. Tickets, photographs, paper keepsakes and other mementos can all become part of the design.

We talk more about how we incorporate those types of objects in our post about Inlaid Keepsakes.

Then World Cup Grass Arrived

Our latest piece of stadium turf came from a FIFA World Cup 2026 match played at Hard Rock Stadium here in South Florida.

When it arrived, it was unmistakably a piece of the field: grass on top, plenty of dirt underneath, and cut into a surprisingly perfect hexagon.

This piece will be preserved inside an 8x10 resin block.

Small pieces of stadium turf can already be valuable collectibles on their own. We’ve seen official World Cup grass sold in pieces only a couple of inches wide for hundreds of dollars.

Instead of keeping a tiny square, our customer brought us an entire hexagonal section of the pitch and chose to have it preserved in resin as a display piece.

Their custom 8x10 preservation is $800.

It’s certainly not something we get in the mail every day.

So…How Do You Get a Piece of a Professional Field?

This might be the question we’ve been asked the most.

And the answer is: apparently, you have to know someone.

Both of the field pieces we’ve worked with came to our customers through stadium connections. We’ve also been told there’s a special tool used to cut the turf into those clean hexagonal sections, which would explain why the pieces arrived in such a distinctive shape.

We can’t verify all the behind-the-scenes details, but we do know one thing: you definitely can’t walk onto a professional field after a game and start cutting out souvenirs.

We’d actually love to hear how collectors in other cities have managed to get pieces of their favorite fields.

And if you already have one? Send a photo our way and let's see if preservation is right for you! 

This is exactly the kind of unusual project we love figuring out. You can contact our team here and tell us what you have.

How We Preserve Real Stadium Grass

Once the turf reaches our studio, the process begins.

1. Figure Out the Right Block Size

We start with the turf itself.

Rather than choosing a resin block and cutting the grass down to fit it, we look at the size and shape of the original piece and determine which block will display it best.

The football playoff turf needed a 12x16 format to fit the extra inlaid objects like ticket stubs, photos and team logos. The World Cup hexagon fits beautifully into an 8x10 resin block with optional lighted base.

The keepsake determines the design, not the other way around.

You can see more of the sizes and shapes we work with in our resin block collection.

2. Get Rid of a Lot of Dirt

This is where stadium turf is very different from a wedding bouquet.

The grass arrives with a thick layer of soil attached underneath. Before we can dry and preserve it, we carefully remove that excess dirt while keeping the turf together.

And while doing this, we discovered something we weren’t expecting.

Mixed among the natural grass were synthetic-looking turf fibers.

Some professional sports fields use hybrid turf systems that combine natural grass with synthetic fibers for additional reinforcement. It’s the kind of detail you would probably never notice from the stands, but becomes very obvious when a section of the field is sitting on your workbench.

3. Dry the Grass

Once the turf has been cleaned and prepared, it needs to be completely dried before it can go anywhere near resin.

We use a drying agent, similar to the process we use when preserving wedding flowers. This removes moisture while helping the blades maintain their shape so they can eventually be encapsulated. View a quick YouTube Short on what this stage looks like up close! 

4. Design the Entire Story

Once everything is dry, we can start building the piece.

This is where the project goes from a chunk of grass to memorabilia.

For the football blocks, that meant arranging the turf alongside tickets, logos, the score and photography so everything worked together visually.

There’s a surprising amount of precision involved in getting all of those elements into the right place before resin is poured.

If you’re curious about what happens during this stage, take a look inside the Wild Coast resin room.

5. Color Correct When Needed

Grass changes as it dries, just like flowers do.

For our previous turf projects, we were happy with the natural dried color and left it alone. With the World Cup piece, we decided the finished preservation would benefit from bringing some of that richer green back into the grass.

So this one is getting color correction before it goes into resin.

Color correction isn't about making something look artificial or brand new. It's about restoring some of the color that naturally disappears during the drying process.

You can read more about our color correction process here, or add color correction as a preservation service.

Why Put Stadium Grass in Resin?

You could put a small square of turf into a display case and call it a day.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But resin lets us do something different.

We can preserve a substantial section of the field while also incorporating the pieces that explain why that particular patch of grass matters: the ticket, the score, a photograph, the teams, the date.

Instead of displaying several pieces of memorabilia separately, they become one object.

And years from now, someone won’t have to ask what that piece of dried grass sitting in a box came from.

The whole story is right there.

Have Something Strange You Want Us to Preserve?

Some of our best projects have started with objects we never expected to put into resin.

Wedding bouquets led to memorial flowers. Flowers led to photographs, invitations, jewelry, shells, medals and other keepsakes.

And now, apparently, football fields and soccer pitches.

That’s one of our favorite parts of custom preservation. If something represents a moment you don’t want to lose, there’s a good chance we can find a way to turn it into something you can actually display.

If you have a piece of a field, court, pitch, race, tournament, championship or another sporting event that you want preserved, reach out to our team.

You can also browse our preservation gallery for ideas or learn more about working with us for preservation in Miami.

Because sometimes the thing worth preserving isn’t the flowers from the day.

Sometimes it’s the ground you were standing on.