Gardens, Tire tracks and Time Lapse

This week six more of our summer staff returned to the golf course. With the increased resources we are able to start catching up on the detail work around the course, while still continuing work on some of our spring projects.  Stuart King, our horticulturalist, is hard at work clean up the gardens and repairing winter damage.  One of the biggest changes Stuart is working on, is the alterations to the garden at five tee. The area where the garden was located is often saturated, even throughout the driest parts of the summer.  We decided to abandon the area and reduce the garden to a more manageable size.

The area through the center of the garden is always super saturated.  We reduced the footprint of the garden down to about a sixth of it's original size. if you look closely at the picture you can see a ridge of soil around the tee pad and sign, this will be the new garden.

 Last year in anticipation of the project we removed all the plants from the garden and bedded them temporarily off site.  It was never our intention to do away with the garden completely, but rather move the plants to a more manageable area.  At the top of the hill behind five green and adjacent to six tee there is a mulched area that is much better suited for a perennial bed.  This area is also visible from six tee, 14 tee, 13 tee and five green, which gives everybody a chance to see it. 

Stuart has spent some time moving plants and adding many of the perennials from storage to the new garden.

Although quite small now, the garden should flourish this summer.

A couple of the members have asked about the dark lines on the greens.  They are tire impressions from left from the sprayer driving across the greens this spring.  We reduced the load in the sprayer to 30% the capacity (down to 60 gallons) and yet the greens were so soft it still left impressions.

Number 11 green.

Number 13 green.

We continue to cut and roll the greens to iron out the impressions.  After a topdressing and some more cuts they will go away. 

During the spring I took a picture a week of 11 fairway and green.  I have combined them in to this slide show to illustrate the colour and growth changes in the spring.   The first picture was taken March 11 and the last was today.  Enjoy.