61 of getting it through. In the California desert areas around the large golfing centre of Palm Springs, disquiet is rising at the prevalence of ornamental water features on golf courses. “They wanted to basically fabricate this mirage oasis of what they thought the desert could be, with these neverending golf courses and lagoons,” local conservationist Hernández Orellana recently told the LA Times. “But the reality is that with climate change, we need to start walking away from that.” She added that means rethinking some of the “unsustainable decisions” that cleared the way for water-intensive developments, and starting to put restrictions on the wasteful misuse of water. Today’s turfgrasses, the product of many years of research, are potentially able to reduce the amount of both water and other inputs needed to keep them in prime condition. “In North America, the Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance (TWCA) is using peer reviews to determine which are the most drought-tolerant cultivars – focusing on cool season grasses at the moment – and certifying them as such,” says John Holmes of Atlas Turf International. “TWCA-approved varieties are starting to be built in to the specifications of golf course architects in the US, and I suspect that a similar push will take hold in Europe before long. Also in the US, it won’t be long before new golf courses get tax breaks for using TWCAapproved varieties. And there is a stick to go along with the carrot: in certain states, legislation will compel the use of such varieties.” It isn’t just within the cool season space, either. Recently in the US, a new federal grant programme has provided a boost for turfgrass breeders producing species that resist droughts. Increasingly severe drought restrictions in warm season golf markets are forcing courses to find lower input options, and pushing the use of treated effluent water for irrigation. As this is purified to a lower standard than mains water, its use mandates cultivars that have good resistance to salts and the like. At another Coore & Crenshaw project, Trinity Forest in Dallas, built atop a former landfill site, one such grass, the Trinity strain of zoysia from Bladerunner Farms (named because its first major use was on that course) has been doing precisely that since the course opened in 2016. “We knew that Photo: Evan Schiller Photo: Tiger Point At Tiger Point in Florida, more than 30 acres of hybrid bermudagrass has been converted to naturalised areas, reducing the requirement for watering
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