In an era of going green and sustainability being in fashion, many golf courses are saying and doing two different things. Around the United States, golf courses are cutting down and removing thousands of trees for a variety of different reasons without replanting substitutes. Some trees are sick, overgrown, blocking air movement or shading a greens complex. In other cases plant material has a shelf life and sometimes things just need to be updated.
Areas in Florida and now the deep south have been hammered with hurricanes and tornadoes over the years, leaving golf courses naked and changed forever. Trees and landscape have been removed without anyone but mother nature having a say on what stays or goes. During this years PGA TOUR WGC event at Doral, I wrote a story called “The Blue Monster Getting Some Of It’s Trees Back” explaining the replanting of 500 trees and palms on the Blue Course. Many of you wrote me and asked why the hell would anyone plant 500 trees on a course. Well this picture shows you why.
Hurricane Season, which lasts from June 1 through November 1, sometimes brings a big dog storm right over your course causing tremendous damage. Massive hurricanes cleaned house and left many courses in need of creating a landscape master plan.
Here at Riviera Country Club, we have just completed a plan and will start planting in June. We first took a tree and palm inventory of everything we have located on the property. The inventory was then totaled and graded if it was a keeper or not. Landscape Architect, Buzz Jaskela, helped us grade the 1000+ trees and develop plan to replace trees and enhance the look of the golf course. There are only 6 ficus trees that will need to be cut down due to them having a disease. We focused on the tee boxes and the support trees around the greens. Shade coverage played a big role on what will be planted.
I will be updating you all summer long on the progress of this project. So check back and let me know if you have any questions.Check out this video below showing me inspecting new plant material.
