Tim - it is a fine article, thanks much for posting. Because of my wife's love for gardening and 'natural' landscapes, I became aware a few years ago of that very paradox -- I thought having a natural landscape meant leaving the garden alone to evolve on its own over time; instead, it's meant an unbelievable amount of work and planning and planting and transplanting and the introduction of a whole range of native species that aren't all that native anymore. The only thing I would note, however, is that my wife fully intends it to be a garden that will, in the end, need little in the way of human intervention and even less inputs (e.g. of water, or certainly of chemicals) -- the thought being that in a sound and balanced and natural eco-system, the native plants will be able to thrive (and 'feed off eachother') in a healthy way and without any further intervention. So, to bring it back to gca, and to ask it very simply: don't courses like TOC or Sand Hills need less ongoing intervention (and inputs) than Sawgrass and Muirfield Village? If naturalism means (or is to mean anything at all), doesn't it mean designing a course in cooperation with nature and in such a way that it lessens the time, money, water and chemicals needed to keep the course playable in the years and decades to come?
Since there are 7 billion of us around, nature may indeed need a little help; but Nature has its principles. I hate to do this, but to quote Behr again: "Hence, it is fundamental principle that we must search for; that basic principle of all which, in the degree it is apprehended, points the way to beauty and order, to the law of Nature....The medium of the artist is paint, and he becomes its master; but the medium of the golf architect is the surface of the earth over which the forces of Nature alone are master.” Yes, and since the forces of nature seem, in one sense, to move towards a state of increasing entropy, we need to work with it if it is to serve purposes that are man made (like the playing of golf); but I think we need to be careful to not go too much in the other way.
Everyone has a comfort zone; everyone I think is going to need to get uncomfortable for a while.
Peter