[Mark_Fine]

Grant,
I agree with most all of what you said.  Trees DO have a place on many golf courses and they should be carefully studied and preserved or even added when and where it makes sense.  But we do have to remember that golf courses are primarily designed for playing golf and not as arboretums.  The key, like most things in GCA, is proper balance. I was actually going to do a thread about trees and how adding them might actually be good for golf.  The key is adding them where they belong and carefully planning for that process.  I come across too many situations where trees have not been well thought out.  Sometimes many of them have plaques on them planted in the exact wrong spots.  If you think it is hard to take down a perfectly healthy tree, try taking one down that has a plaque on it 

[John Emerson]

Grant,
I agree with most all of what you said.  Trees DO have a place on many golf courses and they should be carefully studied and preserved or even added when and where it makes sense.  But we do have to remember that golf courses are primarily designed for playing golf and not as arboretums.  The key, like most things in GCA, is proper balance. I was actually going to do a thread about trees and how adding them might actually be good for golf.  The key is adding them where they belong and carefully planning for that process.  I come across too many situations where trees have not been well thought out.  Sometimes many of them have plaques on them planted in the exact wrong spots.  If you think it is hard to take down a perfectly healthy tree, try taking one down that has a plaque on it 

I always tell members this...”we either grow trees or we grow grass, but we can’t grow both”. They are direct competitors and grass always loses the battle. 

[Jim Sherma]

In areas like Pennsylvania I think it's important to distinguish between pine trees and deciduous trees. There are many courses that have had many pine trees planted in between holes that acted as fast growing buffers. These trees clearly create issues with soil acidity and trying to grow grass around them. They also require trimming from the bottom to keep them from becoming lost ball magnets. Nice healthy hardwoods can become problematic but I don't feel that they create the same systemic issues as the softwoods.

[Bret Lawrence]

Here is an article by Devereux Emmet in The Architectural Forum., March 1925.  This article gives a good idea of one Golden Age architect’s views on trees and landscaping the golf course.  He makes it sound like he never had enough time to do a planting plan for any of his golf courses. He also makes some recommendations we may not agree with 95 years later, like white pines.

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015006759123?urlappend=%3Bseq=249

[Thomas Dai]

Is there also a what I shall term an ‘internal’ argument involved here within the environmentalist, biodiversity, nature etc lobby? Ie ... my tree nesting birds are more important than your ground nesting birds, my flowering bushes are more important than your ground growing wild flowers etc etc and vice versa?
Atb

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