The Shelter Harbor Golf Club has emerged as one of southern New England’s landmark 27 hole championship golf course and private club facilities. HM White established the landscape design and setting for the club’s entrance, its one mile long entry drive and the clubhouse’s immediate campus that envelope more than 15 acres of its 410 acre upland oak and maple woodland. HM White collaborated with the multi-disciplinary project team to preserve and enhance its distinct qualities and characteristics. The design approach was organized around strategies to minimize site disturbance and integrate storm water management techniques within a series of native landscape systems. Working with the components of a glacial till geomorphology, native grassland meadows and extensions of the surrounding woodland established a timeless landscape character, which helped mitigate the extent of the club’s newness.

As former agricultural grazing land, the site’s fieldstone walls were extended and used as part of the landscape’s visual vocabulary that further strengthen the seamless integration between “new” and “old.” These design strategies integrated site engineering approach with the overlay of sustainable native plant communities, proved to meet strict project budget goals.