[Dan Moore]

In addition to animal, vegetable and mineral I think we need to add desert and mountain as specific categories.  Medinah would be parkland IMO but as a more heavily treed or forested sub-category.  The distinguishing features of parkland, I agree would be trees and maintained rough in the playing areas as opposed to natural areas.  

[TEPaul]

"My point was I would like to see "parkland" courses incorporate some of the native areas and a more natural look rather than the Augusta look.  They will save money in the process.  We are beginning to put them in at Arcola CC and the members love it.  They look great and don't impact speed of play."

Mark:

But don't you see, that is just not the old fashioned traditional "parkland" look, at least not in the vicinity of play.

The old parkland look on golf courses was pretty clean---it was short mown pretty much throughout play areas, under trees and with massive expanse etc, etc. Not fairway area but rough area---that was always light throughout play areas. Fescue areas if they used them were distant, as were cattle and such in the parkland estates.

They were an interesting amalgamation of architectural components and I'm not sure there's been anything much like it in look.

I don't know that I'd call ANGC the way it was originally a "parkland" style but one thing I do know it didn't have high fescure areas in close to play. That just wasn't it's "look".

Aronomink used some high fescue areas in close to play with its "parkland' look and it sure didn't look right to me and to be honest the membership freaked out and fired the commitee.

I need to get the bunker book by you and Forrest, but no that was certainly not where I did my research on the "parkland" style course and where it derived from, I can guarantee you that.  

[Mark_Fine]

Tom,
I guess I'm not too concerned on whether a course like Merion or Arcola for that matter, are "parkland" courses or not.  A lot of these old courses have evolved.  Some didn't have trees as you well know and were built on rolling pastures and/or farmland.  Those wispy grasses were prevalent on many of these sites.  I like that look especially in out of play areas (not bordering every fairway).  That is what we are putting in at Arcola and the look is fantastic.
Here are a few examples:

This is an out of play area along #12 tees.




This is in front of the back and middle tees on #5.  It might be a 50 yard carry down the hill.  




Don't judge the bunkers in these photos as we are still working on the Master Plan.  

[ward peyronnin]

gentlemen

Thanks for sharing your thoughts because this question has unintentionaly thrown me into that seam in which i first entered an interest in GCA that being my interim, ie b/ formative years and civilized middle age where landscape arch was the interest and golf took #2 fiddle and the reemergence of the grand old game and my atempt to snag a higher purpose, other than betting, to playing golf.

So repton capability brown offer competing imperatives to routing as the iconic parkland elements. Therefore it seems in combination with green complex design and routing a scholarship in the great 18th century english landscape archies  would be a  prerequisite to design a great Parkland course.

The French landscape movement of that time, and for a long time thereafter, gravitated to the austere geometry of allees, etc. that are also expressed in tree lined fairways. The parkland arch sought to soften thtese edges and strived to  produce the most natural and seamless transition from civilized to wild landscape ( that also favored the hunting eye) that a large scale perspective could tolerate. The only landscapes left on that scale today are golf courses.

But even gertrude Jekyll and Wm Robinson revamped this artificial naturalness in the 19th C by introducing understory tansitional plantings that more effectively bridged the wilder surroundings with the savannah like parkland. But I am back to trees as a primarily aesthetic element and not strategic with this track.

Thus the naturalized areas cited previously have an antecedant but don't preclude the closer mown character of proximate playing areas that Tom Doak mentions.

So are "parklanbd trees" a largely aesthetic element?What is the best way to utilize them as a substitute for the " wind" as a dominant strategic element ?

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