Deer, fox, muskrat, box turtles, screech owls and an occasional coyote grace the woods and grassy areas in this DuPage County sanctuary. Butterflies and hummingbirds dance over native wildflowers. Birdwatchers scan their binoculars across prairie grass, watching bluebirds as they flit from their nesting boxes to find insects. No, it’s not the Morton Arboretum or a forest preserve. It’s one of many golf courses that increasingly are turning their attention to enhancing the environment for golfers and for native flora and fauna.
“It seems like the new wave of golf courses is going to be more natural. Manicuring the out-of-play areas is going to be a thing of the past,” said Don Ferreri, environmental committee chairman of the 270-member Midwest Association of Golf Course Superintendents and superintendent of Seven Bridges Golf Course in Woodridge. “A number of courses in the Chicago area have put in nature trails or small arboretum-type settings. I think it’s real positive with golfers.”
At Seven Bridges and many other Chicago-area golf courses, lawn mowers are no longer being used in the grassy woods and natural areas outside the fairways, according to Tom Voigt, extension turf grass specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Handled properly, these unmowed areas increase wildlife habitat, save money on labor, equipment and chemicals and enhance the golf experience. The golfers, the environment and wildlife all benefit,” Voigt said.
Opened in July 1991, Seven Bridges is an 18-hole public golf course set amid 160 acres of wetlands, prairies and oak savannas. “There are oaks here that are over 200 years old,” Ferreri said. “Some are declining because of age, so we’re trying to introduce new oak trees and hardwoods so there will be a new generation of trees when the old ones go.” The course spends as much as $5,000 each year to replace native trees and plants.
On May 9, Seven Bridges was one of 36 golf clubs across the country participating in the North American Golf Course Birdwatching Open, at which volunteer birdwatchers surveyed the number of bird species. The event was open to golf courses that serve as wildlife sanctuaries in a program sponsored by Audubon International, a not-for-profit environmental organization headquartered in Selkirk, N.Y.
Golf courses that take part in the program must complete components that address environmental planning, wildlife and habitat management, public involvement, integrated pest management, water conservation and water quality management. Seven Bridges entered the Audubon Sanctuary program in 1995, and Ferreri expects the golf course to complete the certification process later this year.
“We have some of the most committed and absolutely groundbreaking superintendents,” said Mary Colleen Liburdi, director of communications for Audubon International. “For them to get involved and go through the certification process, which is quite rigorous, is a positive accomplishment.”
Paul Jarr of Western Springs recently played at Seven Bridges. “As a preservationist and wildlife watcher, I enjoy playing the sanctuary courses,” he said.
The Aurora Country Club, a private, 18-hole, 140-acre course that opened in 1914, garnered the Audubon certification in 1993. It is one of 13 golf courses in Illinois and 130 nationwide that have received certification since the program began in 1989. (Pottawatomie Golf Course and St. Charles Country Club, both in St. Charles, Naperville Country Club, Aurora and Cantigny Golf Course in Wheaton are the five west suburban courses that are fully certified sanctuaries.)
Approximately 20 acres have been naturalized at the Aurora course. Six-foot-tall prairie grasses wave their seedheads along large sections of the property’s fence lines, which were taken out of mowing a few years ago. Cord grass, iris and other native species were planted along the stream beds to serve as buffers, preventing fertilizers and other chemicals from leaching into the water.
“A key thing was approaching the membership,” said Aurora resident John Gurke, Aurora Country Club’s superintendent. “It was going to be a pretty drastic change, not the neatly manicured look that’s mowed. We have a real good membership, and they’re very accepting of the program.” One club member donated 400 trees, and others have donated native prairie plants.
“Our membership is really excited and into it,” Gurke said. “The wildflower buffers around the pond get great comments. It’s a totally new look from before, where it was manicured down to the lake edge. They’re appreciating the beauty of it.”
A map detailing the course’s 2,195 trees hangs in Gurke’s office. “We don’t have many of the native oaks and hickories, but we’re trying to re-establish them,” he said. “Our biggest tree population was the American elm, which died off in the 1950s.” As disease takes its toll on some trees, they will be replaced with native varieties. “A fungal disease is attacking the sugar maples,” Gurke said. “We don’t want to plant any more of these. It’s not the best golf course tree.”
To attract a rare butterfly called the Karner blue, the Aurora course is planting wild lupines in a joint project with the Center for Private Conservation, a not-for-profit organization in Washington, D.C. The butterfly is dependent on the lupine, which is the only known food source for its larva. “It’s a (butterfly) species that was around here and is now limited to several small populations on the East Coast,” Gurke said. “There’s no guarantee (that we can re-establish it), but it’s a neat thing to try. We’re continually adding to these native areas with grasses and wildflowers.”
Wildlife and golfers benefit from the new plantings. “A round of golf is enjoyed on so many levels — the competition, being outdoors, seeing flowers, trees and animals — and these golf courses are providing more of that,” Gurke said.
“The golfers I’ve talked to enjoy seeing the diverse wildlife throughout the course,” said Scott Witte of Warrenville. “Aside from the normal diversity of birds, we have more than 35 bluebird nesting boxes with quite a few nesting successfully this year.”
Witte is superintendent of the 270-acre, 27-hole Cantigny Golf Course in Wheaton. The public course was certified in 1993 and has about 45 acres in restored habitat.
Some of the roughs (unmowed areas) may slow down a golfer’s play when balls go astray into tall grass and wildflowers. Golfer Dan McCann of Evanston doesn’t mind when this happens at Cantigny, however. “The rough? Oh, that’s no problem. That’s the source of my golf balls,” McCann jokes. McCann, who has golfed at St. Andrews in Scotland, likes the new look at Cantigny. “The courses in Scotland look like the rest of the natural environment, not tightly manicured,” he said. “The grass is almost like an open field or a prairie there.”
Jim Berry of Berwyn is a regular at Seven Bridges and Cantigny. “The assumption that these environmentally friendly courses are somehow less esthetically pleasing than other courses is incorrect,” he said. “Anyone who has played Cantigny knows that it is a beautifully manicured course, but its beauty seems more natural, less artificial than other courses.”
Through a study funded by the Midwest Association of Golf Course Superintendents, Voigt is researching more than 50 native plants he has added at Cantigny. “There are a lot of questions and not a lot of answers as to what (native) plants do well and what looks good,” Voigt said. He added that the challenge is “to create a setting where these native plants provide wildlife habitat and provide an attractive setting in which to play golf.”
In a prairie restoration study, one of Voigt’s plots contains sand bluestem, vanilla grass, nodding wild onions, prairie dock and rattlesnake master. Voigt also planted meadow rue, shooting stars, phlox, brown-eyed Susan, great blue lobelia and tufted hair grass.
Voigt’s study also is being conducted at two other courses in the southwestern and northern suburbs, Olympia Fields Country Club and Skokie Country Club in Glencoe. In the Cantigny study, Voigt mowed the grass and planted the prairie species. “They’re competing with (plants in) existing fields,” he said. “Some are doing just fine, while others are not. We’re looking for suitability to the sites, the habitat and the climate as well as how to combine the different species. We’re also looking at the ornamental characteristics and the flowering times.”
He will examine how well the plants do during at least one more growing season before writing a booklet of recommended plants for the natural areas of Midwest golf courses. Directing efforts to establish native plants “can be labor saving,” Voigt said. “There’s savings in not buying chemicals (to treat insects or weeds) or having to mow compared to other areas.”
Although fewer chemicals now are applied to the golf course turf than a decade ago, the fairways look healthy and green. More biological and organic products are being used, Gurke explained. “We’re using more integrated pest management,” he said. “We’re choosing hot spots that are known to be disease prone and monitor them daily. We’ve gone to spot treating versus blanket treating. People expect a fine turf, and there’s a happy medium between making it picture perfect and accepting a few weeds.”
“We became the first soft-spike-only public facility in the Chicago area in 1997 for two reasons,” said Witte of Cantigny. “We want to provide the smoothest playing surface, and the damage caused by regular golf (shoe) spikes made the turf more susceptible to disease.”
The superintendents are also proponents of recycling. No organic matter leaves the course. Grass clippings and leaves are composted, branches are shredded for mulch and oak logs are used for firewood.
“Anyone who is in the golf course maintenance business is an environmentalist at heart,” Gurke said. “You have to wake up to the sunrise and love the outdoors.”
