Winners' Forest

For a couple of years now, Loimijoki Golf and Metsä Group have been developing their cooperation — one that has already continued for decades within forestry — in a completely new way, which was also recognized with an honorable mention in FGA's 2024 GEO Highlight of the Year competition, sponsored by Schetelig! Metsä Group is an international forest industry group whose business is based on the responsible management and use of forests, balancing economic, social and ecological aspects. The aim is to ensure the wellbeing of both people and forests. Loimijoki Golf is a golf course built on the fields of Jaakkola farm as a secondary source of income alongside agriculture, and over its more than 30-year history has developed into a leisure hub for golf enthusiasts in the middle of the Southwest Häme countryside, in Ypäjä. As a forestry farm, its traditions stretch back hundreds of years. The course, set in a rural landscape, receives a lot of positive feedback every year for its natural beauty and varied environment. During a round of golf, the scenery changes from cultivated fields to natural meadows and from deciduous groves to coniferous forest. In Metsä Group's operations, taking natural values and forest biodiversity into account is an essential part of sustainable forestry. Safeguarding biodiversity is one of Metsä Group's strategic sustainability goals. From this starting point came the idea of a forest planted for winners, year after year, on Loimijoki Golf's grounds!

Starting this coming summer, everyone taking part in our golf competitions will, thanks to our new partner Metsä Group, get to help protect forest biodiversity – something that concerns all of us.

In every competition held on our course, the winner is rewarded, in addition to other prizes, with a tree sapling donated by Metsä Group, which is planted as part of the Winners' Forest that forms over the years. The first tree saplings were donated to the winners of the sub-competition of our weekly competition Ypäjä Tour, played 8-9.5.2023.

The Winners' Forest will be planted according to the principles of regenerative forestry, diversifying the tree species, with the aim of a mixed forest of several species. Winners will also get to choose the species of their own sapling. All saplings won during the season are always planted the following spring as part of the future forest, and so that winners aren't forgotten, the owners' names will be recorded on a board erected next to the forest. The saplings of the 2024 winners will be planted as part of the future forest in early summer 2025.

The first tree saplings were planted on Thursday 13.6.2024 together with our players who had won trees