On a recent Saturday at CommonGround Golf Course in Aurora, birders counted roughly 40 different avian species sharing the 337-acre grounds with golfers chasing pars and birdies. It's the kind of scene organizers behind an unusual partnership between the course and Denver Botanic Gardens say they hoped to create when they began seeding native wildflowers into the rough a few years ago.
The collaboration, described by project participants as the only one of its kind in the United States, pairs the Colorado Golf Association with Denver Botanic Gardens to combine golf with environmental conservation at CommonGround, according to Colorado Public Radio. The course, built on the site of the former Lowry Air Force Base golf course and redesigned by architect Tom Doak, opened in May 2009 as a public facility owned and operated by the Colorado Golf Association, according to Fried Egg Golf. Today it's being described as a laboratory for combining golf and environmental conservation, per the CPR report.
Joe McCleary, who was chief sustainability officer for the Colorado Golf Association, took environmentalists out to the course to discuss a possible collaboration after CommonGround experienced flooding a few years before the article's publication, the station's report notes. Conservation biologist Becky Hufft, who joined the project, said urban spaces have wildlife and potential, and that golf course spaces can be improved to provide better wildlife habitat, according to the same account.
Seeding Habitat Without Tearing Up the Turf
Denver Botanic Gardens and the Colorado Golf Association introduced native wildflowers adjacent to the 15th-hole green, part of a broader effort that supports butterflies, bees and birds across the property, per CPR's reporting. The habitat restoration trial, launched at CommonGround in December 2022, uses converted golf course equipment such as aerators and harrows to seed native western grassland species directly into turf with minimal soil disturbance, according to Club + Resort Business.
Ecological monitoring by Denver Botanic Gardens found that introducing low densities of native flowering plants generated a statistically significant increase in bee and pollinator visits compared with unseeded control plots, according to the Colorado Golf Association. Native plants now provide wildlife habitat throughout the course, and CommonGround opens time and space on Saturdays for bird watchers to take advantage of what has become a large wildlife habitat inside city limits.
Drought Forces Water-Use Cuts Across the Front Range
Colorado entered summer 2026 in a deep drought following a record-breaking season of low snowpack, and golf courses drawing potable water are facing the biggest water-use restrictions as a result, per CPR. Golf courses statewide have been asked to cut water use by 20 percent compared with their previous five-year average, adding pressure on facilities already managing tight budgets.
CommonGround uses recycled treated wastewater from the city of Denver rather than drinking water, a distinction Mitch Savage said matters because it means the course does not take drinking water away from residents, according to the CPR article by reporter Anthony Cotton. Statewide, roughly a third of Colorado golf courses utilize recycled wastewater, a rate the Colorado Golf Association says is higher than the national average. A separate tally from the association put the 2018 figure at 32 percent statewide and 39.3 percent in the Denver metro area, while total golf course irrigation accounts for less than 1 percent of Colorado's overall water consumption, per the Colorado Golf Association.
The drought pressure isn't unique to Aurora. Broomfield officials demanded an immediate 20% cut to non-potable irrigation water for city parks and golf courses after Plaster Reservoir nearly disappeared, Hoodline reported earlier this month. Denver Water declared a Stage 1 drought in April, enacting outdoor watering restrictions and moving 5,000 acre-feet of water from Antero Reservoir to Cheesman Reservoir to curb evaporation, as Hoodline detailed in its April coverage of the utility's restrictions.
Skepticism Meets a Broader Environmental Push
The partnership has faced skepticism about whether golf courses, which use chemicals and pesticides and require large amounts of water, can genuinely serve as environmental allies, per CPR's reporting. CommonGround hosted state pesticide regulators for an educational session in November 2023, using its work with Denver Botanic Gardens as a case study for selective chemical application and habitat preservation, according to Colorado Golf Association Monthly.
A tree inventory at the course found that 96% of its urban forest consists of mature and semi-mature trees, with 31% rated in fair condition, prompting hazard tree removals and the recycling of mulch to protect surviving trunks, according to the Colorado Golf Association's storymap. Colorado also ranks second nationally for the share of golf facilities participating in the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program, at 19 percent, representing 45 certified courses statewide, and CommonGround is pursuing that certification.
Caddies, Classrooms and a Community Mission
The Colorado Golf Association sponsors seminars that begin in schools and continue at CommonGround, teaching children both golf and agronomy, per CPR. That educational thread connects to the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy, established at CommonGround in 2012, which provides fully subsidized caddie services to public players while training high schoolers, helping 40 participants earn full Evans Scholarships, according to The Colorado Sun.
Whether the newly seeded native species can survive multiple years of drought without supplemental watering remains an open question, as does how traditional golfers will respond to unmanicured wildflower roughs alongside their fairways. For now, organizers point to the bees, butterflies and birds already showing up on the scorecard as early proof the experiment is working.
