With over 200,000 diverse species, pollinators are keystone organisms in nearly every ecosystem. They provide essential ecosystem services that provide direct & indirect benefits, including pollinating 35% of our food crops & 94% of flowering plants. Despite their contributions to the environment & humans, pollinator populations are declining worldwide due to various anthropogenic causes like land use change & pesticide use. A multi-faceted approach must be taken in order to reverse this decline & maintain the valuable diversity & services provided by pollinators.

Golf courses represent an enormous green space land cover (2 million acres in the United State alone) that already provides important natural retreats & ecosystem services, especially in urbanized landscapes, but have a largely untapped potential to support pollinators. Many courses are beginning to move from resource-intense management toward more sustainable practices, but key challenges to improve habitats for pollinators on golf courses remain. There is a lack of awareness surrounding the myriad of ecological & socioeconomic benefits of supporting honeybees & other pollinators on golf courses, & insufficient guidance on where & how to actually implement pollinator habitat. In order to protect, promote, & propagate pollinators on golf courses, we address these challenges directly through three interrelated approaches:

1) Document the history & shift in golf course practices & provide golf course managers with actionable rationale & strategies to identify & convert underutilized managed areas into lower maintenance areas, as a step towards more sustainable land use, potential pollinator habitat, & even cost reduction.

2) Describe the menu of pollinator habitat options on a golf course (from honey-producing apiaries to formal & informal gardens), with guidance on how to recognize & assess the ecological & social benefits that these provide & easy ways to communicate & celebrate these benefits.

3) Design & build a multifunctional demonstration pollinator garden on a golf course, documenting every step in the process in a way that it can be applied at any site.

Our review of the history & current practices on golf courses makes it clear that high-intensity maintenance does not need to be the norm. Golf has a long-standing connection with nature, but many factors, from war chemicals to televising the sport, has led to the intensification of management. We provide evidence through both quantitative research across courses & case studies outlining golf courses that are now part of a shift toward more sustainable practices. To provide specific guidance on how a course can become a part of this shift, we focus on one relatively simple management action: converting managed underutilized areas on a golf course into lower maintenance areas. There are two main methods to identify underutilized areas on a course that we outline in detail:

1. Observing the course & recording where people regularly go, &

2. Utilizing the DEACON tool from The United States Golf Association (USGA) to map golfers & cart routes.

We demonstrate how using the DEACON tool can also allow managers to actually quantify the benefits of reducing the maintenance level of underutilized areas. These include reducing both water and chemical (fertilizer & pesticide usage), which lowers maintenance & labor costs & has the potential to provide safe ecosystem services & habitat for wildlife & pollinators.

Depending on how they are managed, the different components & acreage of golf courses can serve as safe havens for pollinator species, providing them with resources such as food, water, & shelter. We developed a menu of options for implementing pollinator habitat on courses that allow facilities to choose from a suite of interventions that best suit their specific wants, needs, & individual circumstances:

1. Mixed Species Rough
2. Unmowed Naturalized Area With Wildflowers
3. Formalized Native Pollinator Garden, &
4. Apiaries in Naturalized Areas.

We further document that creating any type of pollinator habitat on golf courses is not only key to sustaining healthy pollinator populations, but can also provide numerous additional benefits for the golf course & local community, including:

• Improved On-Site Safety
• Reduced Maintenance Costs & Labor
• Unique Branding & Sales
• Positive Player Experience & Health
• Community Engagement & Educational Opportunities
• Large-Scale Impact on Food & Water Systems

To provide both actionable guidance & a specific demonstration of how a golf course can incorporate pollinator habitat we developed a set-by-step guide for designing & implementing a multifunctional pollinator garden that equally meets the needs of key end users. Based on scientific research & previous knowledge, we outline the process in terms of the following steps:

1. Establishing Project Goals & Parameters - key visions or desired outcomes, plus any budget or timeline needs
2. Site Analysis - assess physical site features that will affect design
3. Choosing Design Style & Aesthetic - such as a formal or informal garden design
4. Develop a Multifunctional Plant Palette & Design - choose the plants & layout that
simultaneously meet the needs of three key end users:

• Pollinators
• Golfers & visitors
• Management & maintenance staff 

5. Design Within a Budget - strategies for designing within different budgets
6. Communicate the Design - using visuals to communicate ideas
7. Implement the Garden - planning for the day, organizing volunteer events & follow up after the garden has been completed

We then apply all the steps to illustrate a real-world case of designing & implementing a high-quality multifunctional pollinator garden in Goat Hill Park golf course in Oceanside, California.

We recommend that all the knowledge & guidance we have gathered be used to inform golf courses on why & how they can become valuable pollinator habitat sites, while also improving golfer experience & overall function & longevity of their course.