Let the record show it took a handful of volunteers, with a little help from some pros, just a couple of hours to plant Chestertown’s “living shoreline.”
Only eight or nine volunteers showed up on a sodden Monday for the project along the riverbank at Wilmer Park that was expected to take all day to complete.
And they were done by noon – thanks to reinforcements of half a dozen staff members from the contractor, Environmental Concerns of St. Michaels.
“The threat of rain and the sound of thunder expedited us,” says Tom Leigh, the Chester Riverkeeper who helped oversee the work.
It’s a little early yet to appreciate how the shore will look, once the plantings take root, but it’s already a remarkable transformation.
Gone: 500 feet of bulkhead along the shore. Here instead, as of Monday: 9,000 new plugs of native grasses.
Environmental Concerns had previously put in 2,000 plugs of upland switchgrass. The volunteers added another 7,000 plugs of two species of salt marsh grass, one high and one low, and both native to the Chesapeake.
Leigh reports the project is essentially done now. The contractor has installed goose exclusion fencing to keep birds from pulling up the plugs before they’ve had a chance to send down strong roots.
“We should see significant growth in the spring, when the water warms up, and over the next year when it becomes nicely filled in,” says Leigh.
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