Mount Lawley Golf Club Superintendent Rod Tatt Wins Sustainability And Environment Award

Perth’s Mount Lawley Golf Club has received the Australian golf course industry’s highest environmental accolade at the National Turf Industry Awards held in Adelaide last week.

In front of an audience of more than 300 at a gala dinner held at the Adelaide Oval on 19 June, Mount Lawley course superintendent Rod Tatt was bestowed the Australian Sports Turf Managers Association’s (ASTMA) Claude Crockford Sustainability and Environment Award, sponsored by association Gold Partner Syngenta.

The National Turf Industry Awards dinner officially opened the 2023 Australian Sports Turf Management Conference which was held at the Adelaide Convention Centre from 19-22 June. The ASTMA Claude Crockford Sustainability and Environment Award was one of six awards handed out on the night which recognised the achievements and successes of Australia’s sports turf management professionals over the past 12 months.

The Claude Crockford award has been a staple of the ASTMA’s annual awards program since 1996 and recognises those superintendents and their teams for excellence in sustainability and environmental management. The award is named after legendary Royal Melbourne Golf Club superintendent Claude Crockford, who during his near 40-year tenure there championed the environment and managing the courses in harmony with it.

Mount Lawley becomes just the third Western Australian golf club to win the award in its 28-year history, and joins the likes of previous winners Hartfield Country Club (2015) and the now defunct El Caballo Resort (2002).

Tatt, who originally hails from Melbourne and was a past superintendent of Woodlands and Yarra Yarra golf clubs on the famed Sandbelt, joined Mount Lawley in September 2018. In the years since, under Tatt’s guidance Mount Lawley is setting a valuable and positive example of what today’s golf clubs should be doing in managing their natural environment. Together with his course staff and a dedicated band of member volunteers, Tatt has achieved a tremendous amount of work to ensure the golf course and the club’s broader facilities are continually focusing on environmental management while maintaining a high-quality sustainable course.

Located just to the north of the Perth CBD, Mount Lawley is considered one of the premier golf courses in Western Australia and is in high demand with about 70,000 to 75,000 rounds played each year. The course is set on rolling sand dune topography and contains areas of remanent and endangered woodlands, with Banksia spp, blackbutts (Eucalyptus todtiana) and grass trees (Xanthorrrhoea spp) featuring prominently.

Guided by a comprehensive Vegetation Management Plan adopted in 2019, over the past four years the club has actively restored natural vegetation in degraded areas, protected remnant bushland and dealt with problematic vegetation negatively impacting bushland and the golf playing areas. During this time member volunteers, who have grown in number from just four to 30, and Mount Lawley staff have reintroduced almost 9500 endemic trees, shrubs and groundcovers to the site.

Over the next seven years, the planting program will see the reintroduction of an additional 1700 trees and 17,500 shrubs and groundcovers, helping to restore much of the endemic vegetation that had been removed through historical clearing activities prior to the golf club occupying the land. As part of this ongoing work, Mount Lawley has developed a comprehensive flora species list with only endemic species now being planted on site. The extent of the work at Mount Lawley also extends to the preservation of local fauna.

The course provides a vital urban habitat for a diverse range of native animal species, among them the forest red-tailed black cockatoo and endangered Carnaby’s cockatoo. The club has recently installed the first round of owl boxes to provide safe nesting sites for owl species currently experiencing decline in the Perth area and has also mounted microbat boxes as roosting sites for bats found in the region.

The club is also proactive in the protection of the spectacular migratory Rainbow Bee-eater, and through the building and installation of special ‘Quenda bungalows’ is creating safe havens for the Southern Brown Bandicoot (Quenda) from predatory foxes and feral cats.

ASTMA Claude Crockford Sustainability and Environment Award winner Rod Tatt speaks after being presented the award during the National Turf Industry Awards dinner at Adelaide Oval.

Overarching all of the work at Mount Lawley has been the club’s development of a document, released in 2022, which provides a focus for its environmental and sustainability efforts. Titled ‘Beyond the Fairways – Sustainability Strategy’, this publicly-communicated document demonstrates Mount Lawley’s commitment to the protection and sustainability of the existing natural environment. It’s aim is to create long-term sustainable outcomes for the club and broader community by restoring urban biodiversity, while also providing a sustainable and highly regarded golf course for generations to come.

As well as steering the club along its journey to improved environmental management and sustainability, Tatt has also played a key role in Mount Lawley’s current greens replacement program. Under the auspices of OCM Golf, last July the club embarked on the first stage of the project which will see all greens reconstructed and converted to 007 creeping bentgrass over the coming years.

Stage one works focussed on greens 1, 7, 8 and 11 which were successfully opened in February 2023. Starting July 2023, a further eight greens will be reconstructed as part of Stage 2 works, with the remaining eight greens to be completed as part of Stage 3 in 2024.