Invasion

I walked the course today to simply look things over. It occurred to me how invasive these black pines are on the property. Many years ago we had an issue where first time players would hit to 5 green while playing 4. There was no view of the green from the tee because of an old 150 shrub that became a large tree. There were a lot of trees to the right of 4 approach so it was easy to see how you would play to the flag and green in your line of site. our solutions were to grow the tall grass to the left of the 5th green and plant a mature evergreen just outside the tree line to give 4 better definition. It helped. Then a bunch of pines started colonizing around the planted evergreen so we left them. Over the years we removed the pines to the right of the 4th approach which added visibility but removing the old 150 cedar really made a big difference. Now you have a clear site line to the 4th green from the 4th tee. So what about the left side now? The lone tree planted is still there but it is being choked out by the invasion of the black pines. This seemed like a good idea early on, but now I am not so sure. 

blocks the view of 5 green

used to be able to drive behind these

Tallest tree was planted

I went on to Google Earth and emailed myself a few pictures to illustrate. Did you know you can do that? It's easy. Simply click the timeline button and then scroll backwards. You can email any image to yourself. I then found a collage maker Fotojet and imported each image into a preset collage. The dates are 1995 - 2001 - 2018. I then used a program called Skitch to add the dates and labels.

google earth images

I used the same procedure to create one for the third hole minus the Skitch and labels. It took a big storm to remove all these trees but I did not hear one single complaint about the improvements to that hole. Isn't that interesting? If I proposed removing 40 trees to make an improvement to a hole people would go mental but if a storm does it, then it is OK. These back pines are invasive and have taken over. In less than 20 years they have swallowed up a large planted evergreen. If not managed they will swallow up the entire property.

3 before and after

We have let some pines survive in the tree line between 6 tees and 5 fairway. We lost several trees in that area and they provide a valuable screen to the 6th tees. How long will it be before someone questions whether that was a good idea?

6 tees