Inside the ADAMA Solutions Site
On Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula, St Leonards Golf Club provides ADAMA with something particularly valuable — a working golf course where products and programs can be evaluated under genuine turf management conditions.
The ADAMA Solutions Site is integrated into the day-to-day management of St Leonards Golf Club, an inland links-style course where ADAMA products are used across greens, tees, fairways and other managed turf areas. The site provides an opportunity to trial products, assess programs and demonstrate practical turf management solutions in the environment in which professional turf managers ultimately need them to perform.
ADAMA supplies the products used as part of the program, with the site managed by Ben Davis, ADAMA Commercial Manager – Non Crop. Ben is also a qualified golf course architect and was responsible for the redesign of St Leonards prior to the new course opening in November 2024.
A unique 27-hole golf experience
St Leonards has been designed differently to a conventional golf course. The course has nine primary greens, but is played from three distinctly different sets of tees, with alternative and separated fairway corridors creating 27 different holes. Rather than simply playing the same nine holes from different tee markers, the design changes angles, strategy, hazards and approaches to create three distinct nine-hole configurations.
Including the practice putting and chipping greens, the club maintains **11 Penncross bentgrass greens covering approximately 7,000 m² **with Fescue present on green surrounds.
Tees and fairways are predominantly Santa Ana couch, with approximately 10 hectares of these playing surfaces. Maintained rough areas are predominantly ryegrass.
Beyond the maintained turf, approximately 12 hectares of native grasses have been established as part of a longer-term program to restore elements of the site's previous indigenous grassland ecosystem. These areas also complement the inland links character of the course while reducing the amount of intensively maintained turf.
Water security and sustainability
Water management is a major focus at St Leonards. The golf course is irrigated from on-course dams containing a combination of harvested rainfall and water produced through the club's desalination system.
The desalination system is supported by an extensive solar installation recently completed across the clubhouse and maintenance facility. Wastewater generated through the desalination process is retained within a dedicated on-course wetland. An automatic irrigation system provides single-line centre fairway irrigation, with grid irrigation servicing greens and tee complexes.
Water security continues to be one of the club's major infrastructure priorities. Current works include the in-house excavation of an additional irrigation storage dam to increase available water reserves. Importantly, the excavated material isn't being wasted. Fill from the project is being reused throughout the course to create mounding that will be revegetated with indigenous species, as well as forming new golf course features including bunkers.
A golf course built and maintained by volunteers
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of St Leonards is that the golf course and club are entirely volunteer run. That includes course maintenance, construction projects and clubhouse operations.
Wednesday is the club's primary volunteer maintenance day, with approximately 12–15 volunteers regularly working on the course each Wednesday morning.
The result provides the ADAMA Solutions Site with another important real-world dimension: turf programs need to be effective, practical and achievable within the resources available to the people actually maintaining the turf.
Preparing for spring renovation
The next major project at the Solutions Site will be the club's late-September spring renovation program. Soil testing has recently been completed across all greens and selected fairways, with the results being used to help determine nutritional and soil amendment requirements for the upcoming growing season. Approximately one week before renovation, greens will receive a slow-release granular fertiliser.
In the days immediately prior to renovation, the greens are planned to receive a wetting agent along with Contrado® Insecticide and Magellan® Fungicide as part of the pre-renovation turf management program.
The greens renovation itself will involve:
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Two-way verticutting
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Hollow coring using 5/8-inch tines
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Application of amendments where required based on soil test results
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Topdressing and incorporation
Following renovation, Quali-Pro Evolution® Fungicide tank mixed with Quali-Pro Triumph® Advance Fungicide is planned as the protective fungicide treatment, accompanied by foliar nutritional amendments where required.
Tees will also be cored, with cores harvested before topdressing and the application of a slow-release granular fertiliser. The Tees are also planned to receive a wetting agent along with Contrado® Insecticide
A major fairway renovation
The Santa Ana couch fairways will receive a particularly intensive renovation this spring.
Fairways will initially be hollow tined, followed by the use of an Amazone verticutter to pulverise the cores while simultaneously removing accumulated organic matter and thatch.
The aim is to return suitable soil material from the cores into the turf canopy while removing unwanted organic material, before following with the required soil amendments and fertiliser.
The Fairways are also planned to receive a wetting agent along with Contrado® Insecticide.
It will provide an excellent opportunity to document the recovery of Santa Ana couch following an intensive renovation program under Bellarine spring conditions.
Follow the Solutions Site
Over the coming months, ADAMA Turf Management Insights will follow what's happening at St Leonards throughout the growing season.
We'll share photographs and updates from the September renovations, the club's current dam and golf course construction works, product trials and demonstrations, turf recovery and the management programs being used across the Solutions Site. The objective is simple: to use a real golf course, under real management conditions, to demonstrate practical solutions that can help turf managers make better decisions.
Media Contact:
Cam Stuart| General Manager - Non-Crop | E: Cameron.stuart@adama.com