The Championship Course Landscape Rehabilitation Project

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Royal Sydney Golf Club, on Rose Bay’s coastal dunes and heathland, engaged Arcadia to prepare a landscape strategy for a world-class golfing facility that restores the critically endangered Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub ecological community. With many of the course’s European trees approaching senescence, the project reinstates the site’s original sandy, coastal character while improving playing conditions across one of the largest single open green spaces in Woollahra.

A rigorous, research-led revegetation framework guided delivery, informed by biodiversity assessment, flora surveys and tree audits, and supported by a BIM-based Arboreal Management Platform giving RSGC real-time data for ongoing tree management and succession planning.

Now complete, The Championship Course restoration spans 7.6 hectares of new heathland and woodland planting and 5.9 hectares of naturalised grassland roughs, with a former irrigation dam transformed into a Paperbark Wetland of more than 200 trees, now home to thriving birdlife including brush-turkeys, ibises and yellow-tailed black cockatoos.

The results:

/ Over 400,000 native plants and trees established

/ Flora diversity quadrupled, from 30 to 110 species

/ Net gain of 1,592 trees across the course

/ Water use cut 20%, saving 73 million litres annually

/ The critically endangered Eastern Suburbs Banksia Scrub habitat has been restored.

The Championship Course Landscape Rehabilitation Project is a landscape-led transformation setting a new benchmark for urban golf course restoration./ / 2026 AILA Award NSW Award of Excellence for Land Management.

Awards

2026 AILA Award NSW Award of Excellence for Land Management.