Native area maintenance

Our native areas have been an area of focus for the Grounds staff over the last several years. In order to return them more to native areas and less of wild areas, we have taken a few measures.

The last few years we have been slowly adjusting our native area maintenance program. The original concept for the native areas is discussed in more detail here. We have slowly increased the amount of inputs for the tall grass areas without converting them to regular rough and mowing them multiple times per week.

Our first step has been minimal chemical inputs to help control the most troublesome weeds. This past year we treated about 1/3 of the total native areas in order to clean up the most visible of spots. This is our second year of spring weed treatment and results have been promising. We have seen much higher concentrations of native grasses versus weed species and the aesthetics have improved. In addition, we will be making one more herbicide application this fall to help eliminate any weeds that survived the initial application and grew through the summer. This was not originally planned, but we have some product left over from spring from another program.

Our second, and most important, tool for maintaining the native areas is through mowing. Our goal has been to mow them 2-4 times per year. We are working on completing our second cut this week. We had hoped to get this mowing done back in August, but with construction, aeration, and regular maintenance, we were unable to make time. However, we are still accomplishing it early enough to allow for one more cut in late November or early December. A late summer and winter mowing help to injure and weaken some of the weeds by cutting off the crown of the plant. Even weeds that are not killed are severely stunted, and the grass, which handles the mowing much better, is given a competitive advantage over those weeds. Then, with the added herbicide application, we hope to really make progress against the weeds.

Sometimes native areas can be no-maintenance and sometimes they can be low-maintenance. We are working on making the native areas at Bretton Woods a little nicer and more aesthetically pleasing. To do this, we have to take a low-maintenance approach. With minimal time and labor inputs we have seen a slow transition to better grass areas.

Etiquette Reminder of the Month

After filling your divot with sand, either on a tee or fairway, please smooth the sand pile out so our mowers don’t cut through the sand.

See you on the course!

Joe

jvillegas@bwrc.org