Golf coursesMonitor
Shade studies and tree management plans
We find the trees that are starving your greens and tees of sun and air, map them, and write one plan to fix it.
- Light that matters most
- Morning sun
- Thinning targets
- 25, 10 or 5 trees left per acre
- Vista pruning
- To the ANSI A300 standard
- While the work runs
- A daily update by hole
Why shade matters
You can irrigate, fertilize and aerate. You cannot add sunlight.
Fertilizer supplies building blocks, not energy. Grass that does not get enough light grows thin, weak leaves that wear poorly and recover slowly.
Turf has to wake up each morning to start growing. A green that gets light at 7 a.m. outgrows one that waits until 11 a.m. behind a tree line.
Morning shade plus poor air movement keeps the surface wet longer, which invites fungal disease, moss and algae on greens and tees.
Trees close to a green take water and nutrients from the same root zone the turf depends on.
From the field
One report for a private golf club in Georgia.
Our team spent four days on the course with the superintendent and agronomy staff, read the sun on every problem green and tee, and delivered a written shade study and tree management plan with maps for the whole course.
The map
Every area and every tree, on one page.
Each shaded area is drawn by hole and colored by how many trees stay per acre. Blue pins are individual trees selected for removal. Red arrows mark the haul-out and staging areas.
How we build it
Measured in the field, mapped tree by tree.
- 01
A multi-day walk of the course with the superintendent and agronomy staff.
- 02
Sun-path readings on every problem green and tee, showing how shade moves through the day and across the seasons.
- 03
Problem trees identified, documented and mapped, including trees that will cause problems as they grow.
- 04
Each area assigned a treatment: selective removal, thinning to a set number of trees per acre, vista pruning or forestry mulching.
- 05
A written plan with maps, a schedule and daily progress reporting by hole once the work starts.
What the plan uses
The right tool for each area.
Mapped areas thinned to a target density (25, 10 or 5 trees left per acre), plus individually marked trees. Wood is chipped, stumps ground and logs hauled out.
Deadwood out, canopies raised and selected limbs removed to open views of water, greens and fairways, pruned to the ANSI A300 standard.
Dense understory processed in place. The soil stays intact, the mulch holds against erosion, and grass grows back through it.
Turf tires on lifts, loaders and trailers, lightweight aerial lifts and self-driving stump grinders to keep course damage to a minimum.
Reading the sun
Which trees shade the turf, and when.
A sun-path overlay shows where the sun sits each hour and how its track shifts through the year. Line it up on a green or a tee and you can see exactly which trees cast the shade, and in which months.
Do it right once
One pass, not ten years of arguments.
We look at three, five and ten year options with every club. Most find one complete pass works best. It costs less to mobilize once, the course recovers once, and the membership has one conversation about trees instead of one every season.
While the work runs, the superintendent gets a daily update: completion by hole, equipment on site, issues and tomorrow’s plan.
For superintendents and green committees
Find out which trees are costing you turf.
We walk the course, read the sun, and map the plan.