UK: Eden Project creators tee up to open ‘edible’ and green golf course
But what makes Gillyflower golf course in Lostwithiel different is that every square metre of non-playing surface will be used to grow fruit and vegetables or encourage flora and fauna.
By Steven Morris
The Guardian
May 24, 2022
Excerpt:
Each of the nine holes on the course, which is about to welcome its first players, is being planted with fruit and nut trees and vegetables. Hedges and rough areas are being maintained with wildlife in mind; greens and fairways managed in as environmentally friendly way as possible.
“Golf has a reputation for not being very green,” said Gillyflower’s director of golf, Joe Micklethwaite. “The idea here is to create a great course but making sure everything we do is going to be as good for the environment as possible.”
Micklethwaite, 29, learned to play in Cornwall before moving to California and turning professional. This winter he was back in the county overseeing the development of Gillyflower – and also planting hundreds of Cornelian cherry trees on a slope to the left of the third hole. “We all join in,” he said. “It’s been a steep learning curve.”
So now as well as helping point out the best line for a tee-shot off the first, Micklethwaite can give a history of the lines of Gillyflower apple trees planted on the hole (it is an old Cornish variety best eaten from Christmas Day).
He can also talk about the pineapple guava bushes next to the railway line and the plans for a tea plantation on the slope of the very steep second hole, and how he has grown attached to the three Tamworth pigs that are kept on site to help trim undergrowth in a more natural way.
