Jeff Carlson teaches internationally as a leading authority on managing golf courses with a primary focus on environmental sustainability. He was the grow-in coordinator for the Vineyard Golf Course and has overseen its organic protocol since the Club’s opening in 2002. Managing the course under some of the most rigorous environmental standards in the country, if not the world, has required ingenuity, creativity, and more than a little experimentation.

Carlson has worked in collaboration with experts at noted turfgrass management schools (such as Dr. Frank Rossi of Cornell University) and the USGA Green Section to research groundbreaking biological and cultural approaches. These will guide the sustainability protocols of the Larkin Group and influence the future of the golf industry.

Jeff Carlson has repeatedly been honored by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America: first for creating America’s first Environmental Demonstration Course at a public venue, Widow’s Walk Golf Course in Scituate, Massachusetts and then for his work at the organically managed Vineyard Golf Club on Martha’s Vineyard.

For his continued innovation at the VGC Carlson was honored in 2008 with the “President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship” by the GCSAA.