Ferndown Forest Golf Club

Ferndown sits a few miles north of Bournemouth, on the edge of the sandy heathland and pine forest separating the Dorset coast from the New Forest to the east. This is Dorset's forest and heath country, ground too poor for arable farming and left instead to conifer plantation and gorse-covered heath, the same soil type that produces the area's well-drained, sandy-based golf courses. The town grew up around the Ferndown crossroads on the old road between Wimborne and Ringwood, expanding through the twentieth century as Bournemouth's suburbs pushed outward, though it retains a more wooded, semi-rural feel than the coast a few miles south. A course built into this landscape sits among pine and birch rather than open parkland, with the light, free-draining soil typical of the Dorset and Hampshire heaths keeping it playable through wet weather. The New Forest National Park lies a short drive to the east, and the Bournemouth conurbation to the south gives the area a ready supply of golfers within a short journey.