OAK BLUFFS, Mass. — The folks who look after newly renovated Farm Neck Golf Club believe a second growing season will all but snuff out the track’s parkland past. In the place of wall-to-wall turf, they expect 2.5 acres of newly transplanted native grasses to establish deeper root structures, more diverse color palettes, and sustainably scrubby rough areas.
In short, come September 2026, they anticipate the course will more comfortably inhabit and reflect the “sandplain grassland habitat” that once dominated this island landscape.
“That was the goal: to improve the course by ensuring it rested more naturally on this property,” says Farm Neck general manager Tim Sweet. “This has been a semi-private club for 50 years and it’s always been a gorgeous setting. But few visitors understood that golf was played here, on this property, starting in the late 1890s.
“It’s that legacy informed Mark Mungeam’s course renovation, in a very direct way: The turf that golfers played back in the 1920s — those are the native grasses Mark, our superintendent Ryan Carey and his crews, alongside contractor MAS Golf Construction, identified and transplanted in the lines of play. Today, the natural areas they created don’t just harken back. They tie the whole course together.”
Farm Neck GC occupies an enormous, ecologically diverse footprint on the north shore of Martha’s Vineyard, some 425 acres in all. In the late 19th century, when Oak Bluffs was a burgeoning collection of summer cottages, Cottage City Country Club first took shape at the north end of the property. The venture changed names and ownership several times through the 20th century before finally petering out in the late 1960s.
The original nine holes at Farm Neck GC debuted in 1976. They occupy the south-lying portion of this property, meaning these new holes — laid out by Mungeam’s former partner and mentor, Geoffrey Cornish — didn’t follow the old routing at all.
Three years later, the back side, designed by Patrick Milligan, debuted on and around the original Cottage City golfing ground, though just one modern hole (the seaside 14th) follows that routing.
Conceived by different architects, the modern nines never quite synched up stylistically. It was Mungeam’s job to unify them. By the fall of 2023, the architect had been consulting to Farm Neck for 15 years: The many varieties of blue stem, sedge and fescue growing hale and hardy in nearly every direction were hard to miss.
“By mining the edges of existing golf holes — by exploring long abandoned golf holes and land occupied by an old grass airport runway — we found varieties that had been thriving here for more than a century,” says Mungeam, sitting president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. “That’s the aesthetic element we used to tie the nines together. This sandy, scrubby, links look is very much in vogue today, but out here? It’s naturally occurring. It’s literally sustainable.
“You know it’s going to thrive and that’s huge. If you take fescues off a sod truck, from farms off island, they’re likely to fade. That sort of fescue monostand won’t blend well, either, especially with little blue stem. They won’t look the way we want. We saw great progress last season. I’m confident that Ryan and his crews are going to see even more extraordinary color from these native grasses come September.”
As it happens, according to Sweet, the shoulder seasons beginning in September and April are the best times to visit Farm Neck, a semi-private club with a diverse and vibrant membership. In the U.K. style, the public is welcome all year round, even if members tend to make public tee times rather scarce in July and August.
Sustainability is a new buzz word in golfing circles, but Farm Neck has been living this ethic since the 1970s. From Day One, it has operated under one of the country’s strictest conservation covenants. According to Sweet, the first redevelopment proposal for this property was entirely real estate based. The town of Oak Bluffs rejected that and opted for golf, with a smattering of homes, all of it permitted under strict environmental oversight.
The course renovation project, first undertaken in fall 2023, included an erosion-control component on holes 8 and 14, where the routing meets Sengekontacket Pond. Some 20 feet of shoreline had already been lost in the decade prior to 2023, along with a cart path and the back bunker at 14 green.
Mungeam and the club secured town permitting for revetments made of beach stone, dune grass and rolled cylinders of naturally fibrous matting. As part of the renovation, several of these coir logs were installed end to end along 8 and 14, then held in place with cables.
“The town is very involved in anything related to our saltwater buffer zones — the areas around the pond,” says superintendent Carey, who’s worked the land at Farm Neck since 2019. “So we deal with the town on environmental matters routinely. Tree removal, for example, was another renovation item that required negotiation and consent.”
Mungeam’s master plan often called for the removal of trees to make room for these newly established natural areas.
“It all fits together,” Carey continues. “We call these native grasses ‘fescues’ but they’re mainly wild sedges and they’ve thrived here for 45-50 years or longer. They could be 100 years old over on the back nine, because that’s where the old golf holes were. Even so, in transplanting them, we cut the roots and sometimes moved them a quarter mile or more. It takes time to reconstitute those root structures and that’s a focus for us this year: Get that stuff to blossom and come into their own. Golfers want to play from that thin, sandy rough.
“They also want that links aesthetic. The fact that it’s native here? That’s our distinct advantage.”
It’s true that sand & scrub are ever more prized by savvy traveling golfers these days. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a name for this specific vegetative environment: “sandplain grassland habitat,” so identified because it’s ever more rare in the state’s southeast, home to Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.
“Of late, the state of Massachusetts has been very encouraging when it comes to restoring sandplain grassland habitat, and that is exactly what we’ve done at Farm Neck,” Mungeam explains. “But once restored and protected, you have to rough it up to maintain that habitat, which is home to certain birds and animals that don’t fare as well in forest or regular grassland settings.
“I’ve worked at other courses in this region where they cordon off these areas, but then they become overgrown and that habitat is lost. You need golfers trudging through these sandy scrapes and playing from them — to keep them thin, wispy, sandy and playable. Back in the day, they would’ve burned those areas off to keep the habitats intact.
“That’s not so easy today, from a permitting perspective, so we rely on people like Ryan and his crews to maintain them. They’re doing a great job: The scrapes looked amazing last September. They’re going to look even better this fall.”