Growing Native: Olympia Fields Country Club, Olympia Fields

With four 18-hole courses, polo fields, and a mammoth clubhouse, Olympia Fields Country Club was the largest private golf facility in the world when it was built between 1916 and 1923.

Dave Ward attends to the needs of golfers and nature. Photo by Walt Anderson/Visual Echoes.

Today, Olympia Fields' remaining two 18-hole courses cover 350 acres, encompassing oak and hickory forests, savanna, prairie, creekbed, and floodplain. Course Superintendent Dave Ward has launched an all-nativereplanting plan to mimic the original landscape. Assisted by Connor Shaw of Possibility Place Nursery in Monee, Illinois, Ward uses only trees, shrubs, and prairie plants grown from local seed sources, many collected from the golf course itself.

To ensure that the property's aging oaks have successors, Ward is planting six different types of native oaks and adding understory trees such as pagoda dogwood, American plum, sassafras, and ironwood.

A sight appreciated by people and savanna birds—a stream with scattered trees at Olympia Fields Country Club. Photo Courtesy of Audubon International.

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Volunteers from the Thorn Creek Audubon Society have observed more than 100 bird species on site, including summer tanagers and black-crowned night-herons. Other resident wildlife includes deer, beavers, mink, muskrat, foxes, coyotes, snakes, frogs, and turtles.

This gallery of wildlife had prime seating this June as Olympia Fields hosted the U.S. Open, one of many championships held at the historic course. Proving that environmental sensitivity and superb golfing can coexist, OIympia Fields is both an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary and premier golf facility: its championship North Course is rated #2 in Illinois and #24 nationally by Golf Digest.

For more information, see the Olympia Fields Country Club site.