HISTORY OF THE BARBUDA TURF COMPANY
The Golf Course wouldn't grow no mater what......
After 5 years of hard struggle, a man in love with golf and his wife with the nicest beach in the Caribbean were on the verge of giving up. The golf course they dreamed to have on one of the driest islands of the region just wouldn't match their standards. They were rich enough to build one of the most exclusive resorts in the world just for the pleasure of spending Christmas holidays in peace with a few good friends and high end clients but even if they had pumped a huge amount of very expensive desalted water they found them selves still hoping for some good rain to get a decent looking golf course not to mention playable.
Fig. 2 The Golf Course before the use of Seashore Paspalum
Paul Tillman came in May 1994. He racked his brain day and night trying to get the much needed water to the thirsty grass with no great result other than proposing water catchments systems and a new reservoir. He then noticed a real good looking type of grass growing near the salt-ponds and the salty lagoons. He started transplanting it, and growing it with brackish water: it worked.He got in touch with old friends and professors from university to try to identify the grass that did not need fresh water . He proposed the owners to go with what we now know as Sporobilus Virginicus and got a green light. After a few months he got a good job and research opportunity and went back to the Sates to teach at A&M Texas University and deepen his studies on halophytes. He eventually met other enthusiasts of another halophyte type of grass: Seashore Paspalum. He later formed a company in Florida called ETS and eventually a second one in the Caribbean BTC as an offspring of ETS.
The introduction of Seashore Paspalum
Meanwhile in Barbuda the couple went ahead with their experiments first by dropping the salt water growing grass, called in a French company and went with their water saving landscaping project. Basically the strategy was to keep the precious water for the greens and small parts of the fairways. They French lasted one year, the golf still did not reach an acceptable standard. In May 1998 Tillman and his new Florida based company was called back, he joined with Barbudian, David Shaw and at that point formed the Barbuda Turf Company BTC in Antigua & Barbuda ( W.I.).
Finally the Results...
The key to their operation was the development of a nursery with several varieties of salt-tolerant turf grasses: Seashore Paspalum, (Paspalum vaginatum) Seashore Dropseed, (Sporobolus virginicus) and Saltgrass (Distichlis spicata). They selected and transplanted for days and months.These grasses were basically irrigated with seawater and for some periods not irrigated at all. These miracles of nature were as tough as the merciless environmental conditions in which they were growing but you could still feel the texture soft and gentle as the sweet Caribbean Trade winds . One year passed of plain seawater, occasional rain and even sometimes no water at all due to the resort's maintenance problems with the irrigation pump. This made things rougher if possible but even so eventually the golf course started to look and is indeed much better than ever before.
Fig. 2 The Golf Course after the use of Seashore Paspalum
Today the golf course is at the top of it's possible condition and saves about 670 000 US$ a year in water cost. The 90 000 gallons of water which is being pumped daily on the grass would mean that kind of expenditure but thanks to the halophytic technology it is totally unnecessary.
But where lies the secret of such a success? How is it possible to grow grass with sea water? Real grass not plastic as some still tend to state hearing the story....Read on.
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