Royal Wellington wins environmental award

Royal Wellington Golf Club doesn’t consider itself just a golf course, but a wildlife sanctuary too.

The club's course has become eco-friendly through years of hard work and it now plays home to native birdlife, clean waterways, trees, and fauna. The club's work earned them the Environmental Club of the Year at the 2020 National Golf Awards, an award it is incredibly proud of.

At the beginning 2011, the club renovated, and realised it had a special piece of land and wanted it to thrive as much as possible.

It since cleared three waterways of any pollution, and they’re chemical-free. The golf course has strong birdlife and a pest-control programme.

Course manager and passionate Royal Wellington member John Spraggs said it was an honour to be the 2020 Environmental Club of the Year.

“We are absolutely thrilled,'' Spraggs said.

“You keep doing these things and putting your hand up, and to get the recognition against other clubs and peers is very rewarding. We’re very, very pleased.

“We had to ensure what we were doing wasn’t harming the environment and the sustainability of the place.

“We are pretty proud of our streams, there are three of them throughout the property. The water quality is monitored yearly to ensure no contamination from what we are putting on our course might be harmful to the waterway.

``We created buffer zones and no mow areas bordering them and there is absolutely no sign from any of the testing we do of any bleaching other than the stormwater that comes off the road from time to time.”

Even though Royal Wellington is already making a difference, it is not stopping there.

Spraggs is excited about what the club is currently doing and its future plans in this space.

“We’ve ramped it up again over the past two years. We’ve gone away from using any synthetic fertilisers, we use organic based nutrients, and we limit the use of agrichemical use.

"It took a little while for us to wrap our heads around the organic model but it works -- we are using a lot of fish emulsions and worm juice. It’s going very well.”

The club changed from poa annua grass after it died in the summer of 2018. January was hot and humid, so the club saw this as an opportunity to seed their course with something different.

With the environment and sustainability at the forefront of their minds, they went with New Zealand brown top on their fairways and a three-way blend of fescues in the rough.

``We are 70 percent of the way to being finished, something the self-proclaimed golf nut is happy about.

“We’re trying to change the grasses in our rough to reduce the mowing frequencies and we’re very conscious that we can’t keep burning fuels all the time.

``The change to the fescue grass has reduced our mowing of the rough from around 32 mows a year to under 20, which is hugely significant.

“The change has given us better and firmer surfaces for our membership.”

``The club’s work in this space couldn’t happen without a supportive membership. We have a pest-control programme in which some of the members are heavily involved in. We have more than 70 stoat traps on course and are also getting rid of the rabbit population, meaning the birdlife is thriving.''

Spraggs is proud to be working for a club that is so passionate about the environment.

“I’ve been at Royal Wellington for almost 17 years now.

“I’m pleased with all the support we get from the membership, committees, and captains from over the years for me to drive a lot of our environmental work. It’s not me paying for it; they’re paying for it. They’re allowing us to do what we propose, and it’s a really nice touch.”

Spraggs said he has a special affinity with the place.

“I love the property. I love the diversity of the place. It’s not just a golf course; it’s a wildlife haven; it has everything going for it, we are working on getting trout introduced to our streams, getting rid of the predators, re-grassing the course and we see a fair bit of golf out here as well.

“There is no where else I’d rather be.”