These changes to the 2024 US Women's Open course help pollinators, water quality and golfers too [video] (2024)

The greens at the 2024 U.S. Women’s Open manage to thrive even when mowed to a fraction of an inch.

Roses bloom throughout the site, matching the championship’s logo, a nod to the Red Rose City.

In this highly manicured setting, golfers and visitors will see new naturalized areas and native plants. The greens are still green, yet these changes at Lancaster Country Club are more than aesthetic. They can help the environment, pollinators and water quality while cutting costs and even shift how the course plays.

Trees

After Josh Saunders became director of golf course operations in 2019, the first project was removing hundreds of trees from the property. In the interview process for the job, Saunders brought up the trees.

“You guys have no idea what kind of property you have here,” he says. “I mean, how William Flynn routed this golf course to the topography that it is, it’s pretty spectacular. But it was hidden because of all the trees.”

Removing the trees changes what players and visitors see. It also changes the airflow on the course and grass grows below.

“I’m a huge supporter of trees, but some things don’t mix with trees,” Saunders says. “The place got really overgrown which really restricted airflow and that in return really affected how firm the property was playing.”

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Naturalized areas and buffers

Also new are 11 naturalized acres planted with a mix of fine fescue, hard fescue and chewings fescue grass.

Off the golf course, fescue grasses can be seen at Wheatland, where a mix of chewings fescue, hard fescue and creeping red fescue grows tall. The mix is low-mow for maintenance and doesn’t need to be fertilized. It’s also historic and a nod to James Buchanan’s time when lawns were more like meadows.

Lancaster Country Club’s areas with fescue also need less mowing along with less fertilizer and pesticides.

“What that’s done with that, it’s drastically reduced our fertility and chemical cost and our labor because we’re not mowing those areas twice a week like we traditionally did,” Saunders says.

Instead of mowing up to the banks of the Conestoga River and its tributaries, in some areas, plants have been allowed to grow, creating a buffer, which means fewer chemicals, less mowing and limiting runoff into the waterways.

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Native plants

Throughout the site, horticulturalist Tammy Scheurich planted lots of red knockout roses and white vinca to keep with a red and white theme for the U.S. Women’s Open. She’s also slowly swapping in native perennial plants when possible.

“I try to do my part for the environment,” she says.

One area behind the clubhouse used to have Japanese barberry bushes, a plant with deep red leaves. The shrub’s a vigorous spreader and is now on the state’s noxious weed list. Scheurich replaced them with oakleaf hydrangea (hydrangea quercifolia) and Virginia sweetspire (itea virginica), both perennial shrubs with white flowers and native to Pennsylvania. Long after the championship, the leaves will fade to deep red, sticking with the color theme.

Spilled Wine weigela adds deep purple foliage and pink flowers. Pinky winky hydrangea (hydrangea paniculata) has two-tone pink blooms. White and red impatiens give a pop of on-theme color, especially helpful with a championship that starts before many native plants bloom.

The nearby H. Roy Eshelman memorial garden, near the 10th tee, is another transformation. Scheurich and a coworker spent one winter rescuing trees from wandering English ivy.

She’s encouraged columbine to spread instead by sprinkling the seeds around the garden and added native groundcovers like golden ragwort (packera aurea) and wild ginger (asarum canadense).

A pollinator garden near the new activities pavilion is coming to life a few weeks before the tournament. Here are coneflowers (echinacea), Joe Pye weed (eutrochium fistulosum) and bee balm (monarda). Scheurich added allium for bees, bronze fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) for butterflies, black-eyed susans (rudbeckia), tickseed (coreopsis) and more.

She spotted one new addition growing in the naturalized area of the golf course and transplanted it in the pollinator garden.

“I think that’s a native thistle,” Scheurich says. “I’m not sure it is so I’m just seeing what it does.”

More changes are coming. She has her eye on a row of boxwoods, for example. As some of the shrubs faded over decades, different varieties were planted, making it less uniform. Scheurich would love to replace them, preferably something with more color.

That can wait until after the big event.

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