The prestigious B.C. golf course framed against Washington's majestic mountain range offers challenges to both golfers and the horticulturists who strive to achieve a mix of beauty and function in the landscape


Nowhere is the science and art of horticulture more evident than in the design and maintenance of a golf course. The technical considerations necessary to provide growing conditions for grass maintained at barely ¼" tall must be artistically manipulated to create a challenging, yet aesthetically pleasing place for golfers to play.

     Ranked as one of the top 35 golf courses in Canada, Olympic View Golf Club, in Victoria B.C., enjoys an international reputation as one of the country's most demanding and beautiful courses. Crafted 10 years ago from a virgin temperate rain forest, the course offers visitors and members an opportunity to play an undulating championship 18-hole course. The course gets its name from the majestic Olympic mountain range of Washington, U.S., whose snowy caps are clearly visible from the dining room and the tee on the first hole. Golfers play down into a valley and back up to the clubhouse on the first nine holes. The back nine holes are much tighter and go down into the valley again to finish back up at the clubhouse on top of a hill. The fairways are lined by picturesque forests filled with Douglas fir, Pseudotsuga Menziesii, and native Arbutus Menziesii trees with distinctive red bark.

     There are two very distinct schools of horticulture practised at Olympic View. Superintendent Randy Page and his greenskeepers strive to constantly maintain optimum course conditions so golfers enjoy their game every day of the year. Course horticulturist Kathy Green takes care of the trees, shrubs and flowers that decorate the course and add to the ambience and the quality of the golfer's experience.

     Kathy has worked at Olympic View for eight years. Her varied credentials are well suited to the wide range of duties encountered at work every day. In addition, Kathy is an ISA Certified Arborist, attaining her horticulture certification through the B.C. Ministry of Labour's apprenticeship program and studied for a year at the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific. While golfers enjoy playing in such a natural picturesque setting, Kathy's job is to add to the appeal of the course. Her challenge lies in the fact that growing conditions favoured by turfgrass under intensive cultivation do not meet the same requirements as annuals and perennials planted in the same vicinity. The ornamental plantings around the tees on the course are subject to the same frequency of irrigation as the bentgrass carpet-like lawns nearby. The intensive conditions in which plants are expected to thrive on a golf course (including large amounts of irrigation, lots of foot traffic, zero tolerance for weeds and an extremely low height of cut) mean that frequent applications of pesticides are applied to maintain plant health on the tees, greens and fairways. While she is not anti-pesticide, Kathy leans toward a more holistic approach and tries other pest control options such as hand picking aphids before resorting to sprays. "Most of our problem areas are around the club house where there are lots of people milling around," she explains. "Olympic View hosts a large number of weddings, and there are often children around who may eat the flowers." Also, her experience at the golf course has shown that spraying pesticides to control one problem often wipes out natural predators, which then encourages a proliferation of other harmful bugs.

     Unless there is an extreme pest problem, Kathy limits her pesticide spraying to the trees, which are more difficult to deal with holistically. In the last few years, she has been fighting a blight affecting the willows on the course.

     Roundup is the only herbicide sprayed regularly, as it is neutralized rapidly in the soil, and is not as potentially harmful as other products.

     Perhaps the largest pest at Olympic View Golf Course is one which no amount of spraying can control. A large number of black-tailed deer live in the forests surrounding the course, and often venture out to wreak havoc on Kathy's annual plantings. Over the years, she has learned through trial and error, which plants the deer prefer ("they massacre Heliotrope"), and which ones they will leave alone. Meat meal works as a deterrent, but needs to be reapplied regularly. The deer also love to snack on the bark of young trees planted around the course. "We need to wrap the bark of young trees against both the deer and southwest injury," explains Kathy. "On the cold and sunny days we do have in winter often causes damage as young bark heats up in the sun and is then exposed to freezing temperatures."

     "I am amazed by how many golfers love plants," Kathy says. "Of course, they all love a lush green course, but many of them stop and speak to me about the flowers and shrubs around the clubhouse. They notice and appreciate the additional plantings here and there around the course as well." While the terrain and overall impression of the course takes its cue from the nearby forest, many of the tee areas where golfers congregate at the start of each hole are carefully landscaped and maintained by Kathy. The low-maintenance landscaping includes a variety of spreading evergreens and low shrubs such as cotoneaster. In the past, annuals were planted near the tee boxes, but the deer and the heavy irrigation required by the turf proved to be too much for the delicate flowers, and Kathy will spend the next year replacing these annuals with tougher perennials such as heather and thyme.

     Olympic View Golf Course boasts 12 lakes and two waterfalls. The water around the course is both scenic and functional and keeps golfers on their toes. The eighth hole, the toughest on the course, is 420 yards long to its triple-tiered green. The green is surrounded by water and sand, and backed by a waterfall cascading down a grassy slope.

     However, it is the 17th hole, which is the course's showpiece. From the tee blocks, it runs 417 yards to the pin. Directly behind the putting green is a majestic 60-foot waterfall down a sheer rock face. This is the most photographed hole on the course, and play is often interrupted on weekends by wedding photographers framing a shot of the bride and groom backed by the scenic waterfall.

     Another more subtle attraction at the 17th hole is advertised as the Japanese garden. Japanese-style gardens utilize plants for their texture, form and symbolism, and suggestion of beauty. However, at Olympic View, the sheer scale of the grounds and size of the trees and mountains around the course would dwarf the sublime delicate beauty of a true Oriental garden, so Kathy qualifies this with a smile as a "Western Canadian Japanese garden." The garden came about several years ago when the lake between the 15th and 17th hole was dredged. The resulting pile of boggy soil at the side of the lake called out for a garden, and Kathy was given a free hand in its design.

     First glimpsed as golfers play up the 15th hole, the Japanese garden appears as an island oasis in the lake bordering the left-hand side of the course. Measuring approximately 30 feet by 30 feet, the 'pile of boggy soil' has been planned to provide year-round interest. Accessed by a small oriental-style bridge built by Kathy, this garden is visited by golfers who often take a break and wander around the small space to discover the treasures in the dense planting of the island. The focal point of the garden is the Prunus serrulata 'Kwanzan,' which has grown like a rocket in the peaty organic soil of the island garden. Around it, Kathy has planted a variety of rhododendrons and camellias, Gunnera manicata, slow growing Pinus parviflora and Cryptomeria japonica 'Cristata', which suffered badly on the island until moved to a sunnier location. A wooden bench on the island offers a place for golfers to sit and watch the turtles in the lake. The bench is protected by a tall stand of Phyllostachys nigra, a hard-to-find black bamboo.

     Although annual flowers are not used in traditional eastern-style gardens, begonias in delicate shades of white and pink have been used to add eye-catching colour. According to Kathy, they are the least pretentious of the annuals.

     To keep things interesting for the golfers, course superintendent Randy Page changes one or two of the holes annually. This invariably gives Kathy some more areas to play with - to fill with colours and textures around the tees.

     Although it is sometimes difficult to improve on the wild beauty of nature on Vancouver Island, there are spots on the golf course which occasionally need extra attention. Randy recently noticed the washroom and pop machine area between the eighth and ninth hole was 'looking a little ratty' and asked Kathy to create a small garden. "While we try to leave the outlying areas natural, this was an area people are constantly walking through, so it needed some work." The golf course's irrigation doesn't go beyond the fringe of the greens, so Kathy decided to install a xeriscape garden. "I planned a drought- and maintenance-free garden," she explains. "This is not an area which I am able to regularly maintain, so we mulched it with river rock and will be adding some crushed brick to make a walking path and to add some colour." The garden was planted in August, and includes Grevillea, an evergreen shrub with red flowers, Artemesia x 'Powis Castle', a fine-leaved, very drought tolerant variety, Santolina chamaecyparissus, Agastache foeniculum, Senecio and several Pennisetum varieties.

     While the course glories in the harnessed wild beauty of Vancouver Island, the plantings around the modern glass clubhouse showcase ornamental horticulture at its most vibrant. Huge swaths of brilliant red, blue, yellow and white annuals sweep around the clubhouse to add to the panoramic views offered by the restaurant. One long bed, which is highly visible from the dining room, is planted with 2,500 bulbs each fall for a spectacular show the following spring.

     Kathy plants large moss baskets full of Victorian-like mixes of annual flowers which are then hung below the restaurant and create a welcoming entrance to the Pro shop on the lower level. In winter, the baskets are refilled with pansies.

     A greenhouse will be built at Olympic View Golf Club this winter in which Kathy will overwinter geraniums, and grow the annuals she will use in her baskets and around the club house. "I am fortunate to work in a place where the management recognizes the importance of ornamental horticulture," she explains.

     In a climate where golfers can play 12 months of the year, they are just as likely to own a pair of rubber boots with spikes as a pair of golf shoes. This creates yet another challenge for Kathy as she endeavours to add winter colour to provide interest for golfers during the winter months. An average winter in Victoria may offer only four or five days of snow, leaving a great deal of dormant beds with bare soil exposed during the winter. While not yet having found the perfect plant that blooms all year long, Kathy makes do with winter annuals. Large pansy baskets are hung from the clubhouse and last well into spring. Once the annuals around the clubhouse are removed in the fall and bulbs planted beneath the soil, forget-me-nots are plunged into beds that can be viewed from the restaurant. The forget-me-nots stay green over the winter and bloom in early spring. Even better, the delicate-looking plants are unpalatable to the deer population foraging for food in winter.

     Remarks in their guest book praise Olympic View for both its beauty and the quality of play. Every comment reflects the crafting of science and art that goes into the running of this championship course. Golfers and duffers who play Olympic View should listen to advice from golfing great, Al Geiberger, "If you hit a bad shot, just tell yourself it is great to be alive, relaxing and walking around on a beautiful golf course."