Design
Sustainable design is all about the details for individual project components coming together in a cohesive and integrated package.
In the design phase, the details come together — and many important technical choices are made. Topographic and grassing plans, landscaping and ecological designs, drainage, irrigation and community access plans are among the critical components of sustainable golf design. When overlaid, these details should combine to paint a clear and powerful picture of the project’s sustainability.
On the Ground: Castle Stuart, Inverness, United Kingdom.
Designed by Gil Hanse with Mark Parsinen.
Topographic plans and earthworks
Topographic plans show the amount of physical landscape change that will take place. Efforts should be made to minimise earth movement while creating a golfing product with sufficient interest.
Earth-shifting brings inevitable environmental impacts. It disturbs the soil structure and its ecology and can result in siltation and erosion. Clearly some topography is more prone to erosion than others. Moving earth can also put terrestrial ecology at risk and damage existing hydrological and watershed functions.
Naturally it costs more move a lot of earth than to move less. Balancing a cut and fill within localised parts of a site will reduce labour, fuel and disposal cost during construction and restrict overall disturbance to well-defined zones of the site. If needed, a shortfall of fill material could be overcome by creating additional lakes and water features.
Done properly and in certain locations, earth-shifting can also bring significant long-term environmental benefits, especially on brownfield sites. Reshaping the land can rejuvenate the landscape following industrial use or intensive agricultural use. It can regenerate ecosystems — the creation of new pond and wetland areas being perhaps the most obvious. It can also be used to create niche grasslands, such as wet hollows and dry knolls.
Shaping the landscape can be used in other ways too. It can be shaped to direct water — and golf balls. Slopes that feed balls back into playing areas can reduce the overall acreage of maintained turfgrass. In addition, positive drainage can deliver water into attenuation ponds and reduce the need for pipework.
The goal for all projects should be to design a cost-effective earthworks solution that delivers visual interest to stimulate and challenge the golfer, while reflecting the character of the local landscape.
