The Plantation at Ponte Vedra

The Plantation's 18-hole championship course was designed by Arnold Palmer and longtime Palmer Design Company partner Ed Seay, with Bob Walker (a senior Palmer designer at the time) working the original layout and Harrison Minchew (also a senior Palmer architect) leading touch-up work in 2006. The course underwent a further renovation guided by the Arnold Palmer Design Company in 2016. It plays to roughly 7,022 yards with a slope rating of 144, features more than 50 bunkers, and has water in play on 16 of its 18 holes -- a demanding, characteristically Palmer-style test built into a residential setting rather than a standalone resort course.

The Plantation uses a fully bundled access model: buying a home here makes you an equity member of the club automatically, with a mandatory initiation fee (reported at $120,000 as of 2026 buyer's-guide sources) due at closing and monthly dues of $2,046 for standard homes or $2,331 for Garden Homes (the difference covers included lawn maintenance). There is no separate application, sponsorship, or waitlist process for golf access the way there is at invitation-only clubs -- membership is simply a condition of ownership. Dues cover unlimited use of the golf course, fitness center, tennis, beach club and clubhouse facilities, plus 24-hour gated security, private mail service and common-area maintenance, with capital allocation, an Amenities Improvement Plan assessment, and trash/recycling billed as additional line items.

Housing at The Plantation is dominated by estate-scale single-family homes, typically in the 2,900 to 8,300+ square-foot range with most clustering around 4,000-4,500 square feet, alongside a smaller tier of custom one-story Garden Homes positioned on quiet cul-de-sacs for buyers who want lower-maintenance living within the same gated, amenity-bundled community. As of a spring 2026 market snapshot, roughly 16 properties were listed for sale with prices ranging from about $1.8M to $4.15M, averaging approximately $2.7M -- positioning The Plantation as an upper-tier but not ultra-luxury price point relative to some other private Ponte Vedra Beach communities.

A $15 million renovation completed across 2023-2024 -- described by the club as its largest in roughly 37 years -- remade both the 40,000-square-foot clubhouse and the private oceanfront beach club. The clubhouse now includes formal and pub-style dining venues, a 100-seat outdoor dining terrace overlooking the community's lakes, an expanded fitness center, wine lockers, firepits, a library and a massage room. The beach club renovation added a new 'Surfside' building with a casual food-and-bar shack, changing rooms and showers, a fully renovated Junior Olympic-size pool, and upgraded pool-deck furniture. Racquet sports got a dedicated buildout too: seven tennis courts and five pickleball courts (with a new pavilion including restrooms and a summer kitchen added in the recent renovation), plus two croquet courts -- a relatively unusual amenity for a Florida private club.

The Plantation sits in Ponte Vedra Beach, St. Johns County, within a market that also includes Sawgrass Country Club, Marsh Landing Country Club, and the TPC Sawgrass ecosystem (home of the PGA Tour's Players Championship). Unlike TPC Sawgrass's destination-golf draw or Sawgrass Country Club's older-money private-club identity, The Plantation's differentiator in this market is its fully bundled, no-buy-in-decision membership model combined with direct private oceanfront beach access.