La Cumbre in Golf Digest
Wayne's Work featured in Golf Digest
Some of these changes are brought on by passion or ethos—from supers, board members or players—and others are dictated by nature. Such is the case in drought-stricken California. Wayne Mills manages La Cumbre Country Club in Santa Barbara, where cutting down on water is not only the right thing to do but is state-mandated. When Mills got started in 2016, he was looking to take advantage of incentives the government was offering to properties that reduced water usage. Mills’ first thought was increasing the course’s native populations, which are predisposed to fare better in the arid climate and retain water more efficiently. One day, some college researchers were studying a creek nearby. He asked them to come take a look around the grounds. “I realized I needed some help,” he says. They introduced him to a local biologist, who, with her husband, specializes in mitigation. Together, they decided to restore the native oak communities using the surrounding hills as a guide. To do this, they hiked the nearby mountains to propagate the exact genetic varieties local to Santa Barbara.
Mills still plants some non-native species for the “show factor.” Members have affectionately nicknamed the annual crescendo of red flax, purple lupines and white sage the “super bloom.” Mills orchestrates the plantings to flower at different times, attracting pollinators from hummingbirds to sweat bees and mimicking the drama of changing seasons, a rarity in the Golden State. Mills describes it as a “snowball effect.” If you give a course a flowering garden, you’ll end up with aphids seeking nectar. Then the birds arrive to munch on the insects. Mills and his team are converting another 30,000 square feet to meadow. It’s the last of the “easy pickings.” After that, they will chase another creative, water-cutting, wildlife-friendly solution—still to be discovered.
