B) The Naturals

Vineyard Golf Club

After more than three decades in golf course management, CGCS Jeff Carlson has been on quite a late-inning roll the past half-dozen years, proving that you can indeed teach an old salt a few new things.

Carlson, superintendent at the Vineyard Golf Club near Edgartown, Mass., and ELGA’s 2003 national private-course winner, has learned well. After accumulating a wealth of golf course knowledge during a 30-year stint on Cape Cod at Brewster Golf Course, later known as Ocean Edge, he sought new challenges and made the most of them.

Carlson left the Cape for Scituate, Massachusetts, in 1997 to help architect Michael Hurdzan build the environmentally acclaimed Widow’s Walk. That effort earned the 19-year GCSAA member a national Environmental Steward Award in ’98. A little more than a year later, Carlson was on Martha’s Vineyard as construction superintendent for British architect Donald Steel and the Vineyard Golf Club project, which in turn led to another national environmental honor.

The 2003 ELGA makes the 55-year old Carlson the first repeat national winner in the GCSAA program since Tim Kelly’s run of three ESAs at the Village Links of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, in the mid-1990s. “This one is an awfully satisfying honor. I’m really proud of the golf course. Because of the emphasis on organics, it’s been very interesting and very different from what I’ve been used to,” Carlson says, referring to the Vineyard’s chief claim to environmental fame—it’s a totally organic venue.

Hitting the learning curve

When the inland links-style layout opened in the spring of 2002, Carlson’s education was just beginning. He had dabbled in organic turf care on Cape Cod and a little more with Widow’s Walk, but the Vineyard was something else again. Because water quality is a major issue of the island, the course—the first built on Martha’s Vineyard in 30 years—was mandated organic during an arduous permitting process.

Carlson notes that the design and style of the course, a meandering open links with fewer than 70 acres of maintained turf, is a big boost to an organic program. Also, his grass selections turned out to be a major key—A-1 bentgrass greens, L-93/Southshore bentgrass tees, Colonial bent/fescue fairways and fescue/bluegrass roughs—because all have adapted well to the local environment and maintenance regimen. “The thing about organics is that we’re always looking around for different tools to combat diseases,” he says. “We get all the basic fungus diseases common in the New England area. It makes for some unique strategies.”

Products, strategies and results are constantly under review by a committee made up of local and regional island board members, environmental organization executives and the superintendent. Even being in the early states of seeking Audubon’s Signature status sharpens the scrutiny.

All for one

The Vineyard Golf Club is all about the organic program. It dominates Carlson’s water management and IPM practices and even his efforts in education and outreach. The membership is kept attuned to the regimen through the Club’s Web site, the superintendent’s newsletter and logs sent to Club officials. Carlson is also currently training a landscaper to organically manage a couple of residential golf greens in the pesticide-free town of Chilmark across the island from Edgartown.

“The organic approach is a very interesting one, and a lot of it is about communication,” says Carlson, who also works as a consultant for the Center for Resource Management. “We have a terrific membership that’s very enthusiastic and very positive in its support of this approach. I’ve really learned how important communication is and how it sets levels of expectations and awareness.”

Obliging the wildlife

The Vineyard Golf Club was constructed on the site of a proposed housing subdivision that had never left the drawing board. The site also included an environmentally sensitive 25-acre frostbottom, which eventually became the heart of Carlson’s wildlife/habitat program.

Among other things, the scrub oak-laden bottom is home to several varieties of endangered moths and the Northern Harrier. During construction of the course, a 100-foot permanent buffer was created to protect the area and a tree-management program was put in place. Another, larger buffer was built around a 300-square-foot vernal pool and a nearby old mountain laurel. Ancient island trails on the 238-acre Vineyard Golf Club property have been preserved and enhanced to accommodate island residents’ passion for walking.

That special feeling

Being the first superintendent to win national environmental awards on two different golf courses is most rewarding to the longtime turf manager. Widow’s Walk, built on a landfill on the coast southeast of Boston is a pure sustainable golf course and a high-profile demonstration project. The Vineyard, on the other hand, is an open, rare inland island links layout with an ongoing turf-care strategy that is purely nature’s own. “My feeling is that the two awards are really different. I was so excited when I received this one (ELGA),” Carlson says. “Widow’s Walk was a hard course to develop because of all the sustainability, while the Vineyard and its organic maintenance is so much different than anything I’ve ever done. “There’s going to come a time when we’re all going to have to do something like this golf course, so I’m really proud of the work we do here. Not to take anything away from Widow’s Walk, but this one is probably a little more special.”

- Golf Course Management, February 2004