Organic practices: environmentally conscious efforts are making a difference at Tierra Verde Golf Club

Golf Digest, April, 2005 by Ron Whitten

**** Tierra Verde

Golf Club

Arlington, Tex.

817-572-1300

Green fee: $48-$61

It might be coincidence that just a few months after a national conference on the possibilities of "organic golf," a course using organic maintenance practices has been named the overall winner in the 2004 Environmental Leaders in Golf Awards, co-sponsored by Golf Digest and the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. At Tierra Verde Golf Club, a municipal course in Arlington, Tex., superintendent Mark Claburn feeds his tees, fairways and greens with mostly organic fertilizers, including processed poultry manure and corngluten meal. His shop contains a "microbrewery" that breeds EPA-approved biofungicide microbes that are routinely sprayed on the greens to gobble up dollar spot and other fungal diseases. Claburn's staff also sprays fermented compost water to oxygenate plants and uses vinegar to eradicate Poa annua from Bermuda fairways.

But the seven-year-old Tierra Verde is a role model for other reasons. On 257 acres of north Texas prairie near Dallas, it has only 92 acres of maintained turf. Holes are edged by prairie grasses, plum thickets and deciduous forests that also serve as biofilters, watershed buffers and wildlife habitat. State-of-the-art irrigation applies water sparingly. An ongoing outreach program educates golfers and local residents on the course benefits of wetlands preservation, recycling and bird-watching.

Other 2004 ELGA winners include National Private: The Club at Pronghorn, Bend, Ore., John F. Anderson, superintendent; National Resort: Barona Creek Golf Club, Lakeside, Calif., Sandy Clark, superintendent; and International: Stewart Creek Golf and Country Club, Canmore, Alberta, Canada, Sean Kjemhus, superintendent.