The Professional Grounds Management Society has given Stone Mountain Golf Club of Stone Mountain, Ga. a Grand Award as the country's top grounds management program in the golf course category of the Society's 2006 Green Star Awards competition.
Stone Mountain Golf Club is part of the 3,200-acre Stone Mountain Park located only 16 miles from downtown Atlanta. The property has 127 acres of turf, nearly four acres of display gardens, nine acres of ponds and lakes, nine acres of parking lots and paths, and 192 acres of natural plant/forest communities.
Managed by Superintendent of Grounds Anthony Williams, CGCS, CGM, and a staff of 13, the club achieved Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary status in 2006 and has emerged as an environmental leader within the golf industry. The grounds crew operates based on the following motto: "Notably Clean and Green."
The golf club was selected based upon the quality, challenge, operating budget, and performance in maintenance of the site's grounds.
One of the notable trademarks of the club's location – the beauty and natural wonder that is Stone Mountain – also serves as one of the ground crews greatest challenges. The granite outcrops and the shallow soils around the mountain can test a superintendent's skills in many ways. These unique features are maintained as natural micro environments, but the installation of drainage or irrigation pipes through solid granite is a challenge that has earned the course's staff the nickname "Stone Soldiers."
The Green Star Awards program brings national recognition to grounds maintained with a high degree of excellence, complimenting other national landscape award programs that recognize outstanding landscape design and construction. This year's program acknowledged the nation's top manicured grounds in settings ranging from parks to apartment complexes to cemeteries. Overall, PGMS presented 14 Grand Awards, its highest honor, as well as 12 Honor Awards in a dozen categories of competition.
The Green Star Awards program brings national recognition to grounds maintained with a high degree of excellence, complimenting other national landscape award programs that recognize outstanding landscape design and construction. This year's program acknowledged the nation's top manicured grounds in settings ranging from parks to apartment complexes to cemeteries. Overall, PGMS presented 14 Grand Awards, its highest honor, as well as 12 Honor Awards in a dozen categories of competition.
