The Trick to Clearing Forested Land

[Adam_F_Collins]

One of the biggest eyesores at many new courses which are routed through forested land is the almost scar-like appearance at the edge of the tree-line.

The trees have never gotten light beyond the top of the canopy, so they are all bare accept at the top. This is the case with most of the leafy trees, and many of the conifers - it seems impossible to make a new course through forested land 'blend in'.

However, from some of the photos I've seen (particularly those of Bandon Trails and Hidden Creek, - they don't have this scarred appearance.

How do they do it? Is it just a more carefully process of selective cutting? Being careful to allow a few to 'spill' out of the forest edges - into the short grass? Is it the planting of new, trees? Both?

What's the secret? And why do you so rarely see it employed?

[TEPaul]

Adam:

That's an excellent question at Hidden Creek. If that question had been asked it would've been one of the best all day. Probably no one thought to ask it because I'm sure almost no one there had seen that land before the course went into construction.

But I did and I seem to remember that it was a lot more dense than the treed areas just off play are now. Plus they do a lot of work in the treed areas just off play now. Ian Dalzell mentioned that very thing as we walked down #17 and he even showed us how they'd cleared a lot of stuff on the ground just to facilitate recoveries. Basically they take something like a Bush-hog through there. As far as most all trees being limbed way up I don't know if they did that or they were so close they were shooting to the light of a little of both.

But way back before the course went into construction I did walk through there with Coore, Hansen and Brad Klein---through what they call the "center-line" which is about a six  foot swath cut they do with some piece of machinery that basically just chews through anything to make a path (the "center-line"). Other than that we were walking through woods and I couldn't see ten yards in front of me at any time. Finally I asked Coore what the hell he or we were supposed to be looking at walking around out there in the forest for half the day. He didn't even have a topo with him.

That's when he said; "See that little bump over there on the ground? Im looking for things like that I can start to work off of."

That was one of the most remarkable and educational things I've ever heard in golf course architecture and in a sense that's the secret of architects like Coore and Crenshaw. In a more general way that's a lot of what he spoke about last Monday. It may have come out as the stories of him walking or roaming all over the property for maybe weeks on end. That was part of what he was doing---eg letting even teeny stuff about the land (like that little bump on the ground he pointed to) inform him of where they could start, what they could do and what was to come in the end.

Good question---and I'll be sure to ask either Jeff Riggs or Bill Coore one of these days soon.

[TEPaul]

I'll also tell you about some of the trees they left on the sides of many holes and why. It's a subtlety that I doubt few even noticed the other day much less the significance of some of it.

[John Foley]

Tom,

The thing I don't understand is when Bill said he looks for those little bumps on a site that was as heavily forrested as HC how do those bumps stick around durring stump removal?

Doesn't that process ruin alot of those "little bumps"?

As for swales, ridges & the such I think they would survive.

[Joe Hancock]

John,

You're right in that it takes some effort to preserve those little humps and bumps. the amount of original contour left behind is directly attributable to the operators involved in the clearing and grubbing process. The more aware they are of the benefits of those humps and bumps, the more likely they will be to avoid a complete erasure.

Of course, this whole discussion is assuming the architect wants to preserve humps and bumps. When fairways are created with massive scrapers and surrounded by containment mounding, the benefit of humps and bumps hardly matters. Which brings us to the topic of routing.......

Joe

[Adam_F_Collins]

Ah - at last! Replies!

Thank you gentlemen, as this has been a question I've been interested in for a while. The attention to the subtle details like this are what separate the cream from the rest.

I hope to get a chance to see some of this stuff up close one of these days, but I'm learning what I can right now from a distance.

I was shocked at the photos of both Bandon Trails and Hidden Creek - very little of the "scarred" look. Amazing. Done in that way, I imagine a course could completely blend into the landscape in just a few years - as opposed to decades on other courses.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The modern Archies have it tougher than the Golden Agers did. The demand for a blended, natural appearance which is on the rise today is a tall order to produce, and it seems that few have what it takes to do it.

The devil is in the details. Next time you're talking to Mr. Coore, Tom - tell him I noticed.

[Eric Pevoto]

Adam,

Clearing with irregular lines must help keep the bowling lane effect and scarred look to a minimum.  Simpson and Wethered discuss it in The Architectural Side of Golf.

You're right that they did a nice job of opening the corridors at Hidden Creek.  There's a spot at the left of #9 though that stood out as odd (see below).  Why clear this squared off area 30 yards into the woods?  Looking at the aerial, you can see a swath of vegatation that's different from surroundings.  

[Tom_Doak]

Adam:

The trick is, wherever possible, to look for small natural clearings where the trees are spaced out a bit more widely and they have more branching, and to use those for your edges as much as you can.  We even managed to do that with the gorse on #17 and 18 at Pacific Dunes.

When you can't do that, then you clear a bit wider than you otherwise might, and plant some younger stuff at the edges.

[TEPaul]

"Tom,

The thing I don't understand is when Bill said he looks for those little bumps on a site that was as heavily forrested as HC how do those bumps stick around durring stump removal?

Doesn't that process ruin alot of those "little bumps"?"

JohnF:

Those "little bumps" may've gotten a bit roughed up during any tree or brush removal but Bill and the Boys treated them good. Most of the crew ate out of that WaWa at the corner of English Creek Rd and a couple of times I saw them pick up a bunch of cheese and bacon bagels to nuture those "little guys" back to hale and hearty. When I stepped over to the right of #12 the other day to take a leak I even picked up one of those old WaWa cheese and bacon bagel wrappers.

[TEPaul]

I think I might have taken one of my cigarette breaks  between Bill Coore and Jeff Riggs talks and I might've missed the mention of what the natural soil structure is at Hidden Creek, but I've always heard it's sort of mixed and complex.

This probably brings up a good question about Hidden Creek and Coore and Crenshaw's basic construction modus operandi when it comes to shaping golf holes and what may happen to those "little fellows" on the natural site like small bumps and such. While driving Bill Coore all over New Jersey the other day he did mention that they "sand capped" some site but I can't remember which course it was. Even when they do that I think they still try to very much maintain the little natural contours on the ground.

One time I was up at Rees Jones's Lookaway durning construction and around what was to be the 4th and maybe 8th hole I saw a virtual mountain of dirt. That was basically the topsoil they'd stripped off the entire course to shape it and then lay the top-soil back down. That sort of shocked me. I asked Bill Coore sometime much later if they did that and he said not unless it was absolutely unavoidable. I've never seen that virtual mountain of top soil on any C&C site.

So the question is what did they strip off of Hidden Creek to shape it? I don't really know but it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't that much. They probably just pushed stuff around a little here and there.

But for a real good example of natural man-made work the flatland holes of Friar's Head is a great example. That pre-construction was dead flat potato fields. But if you look at that area today I bet you'd have a very hard time telling the mild topography that's in that area now wasn't natural.

[Adam_F_Collins]

The trick is, wherever possible, to look for small natural clearings where the trees are spaced out a bit more widely and they have more branching, and to use those for your edges as much as you can.  We even managed to do that with the gorse on #17 and 18 at Pacific Dunes.

When you can't do that, then you clear a bit wider than you otherwise might, and plant some younger stuff at the edges.

Tom D,

Is this especially time-consuming or expensive to do? Why do we so rarely see such techniques employed?

[Tom_Doak]

Adam:

Yes, it is very time-consuming to look for little veins of open space in the woods in order to make the clearing look better.  A lot of architects aren't around much in that stage of the project, so the only ones who do this are the architects who have their own employees on site on an everyday basis ... whether they are involved in the shaping as Bill's guys or my guys are, or just an everyday presence as Nicklaus and a few others have.

Tom P:

You should see the twin peaks of topsoil at Sebonack right now.  However, we cleared everything with trackhoes and trucks and carted the topsoil away to be sifted, so we managed to save most of the little wrinkles in the terrain and now we are putting back a bit of topsoil over them.  This was a lot more expensive than stripping the topsoil with scrapers but it was a lot better for the soils, and it preserved the contours instead of forcing us to try to recreate the wrinkles in our shaping work.

Actually we saved a lot more topsoil than we want to put back.

[Don_Mahaffey]

"This was a lot more expensive than stripping the topsoil with scrapers but it was a lot better for the soils,..."

Tom,
Have you always tried to remove top soil in this method? Obviously you want to have healthy turf on the courses you create and I'm curious to know what you've learned through the years to create better conditions for the turf. Are you doing anything different with the courses your building now then what you did 10 years ago?