This is the third in our series on the use of native plants and sustainability. This blog is about shoreline enhancements and making your lake home look natural between the water and turf, as well as help with pollutants to the water.
Humans are naturally drawn to water and from ancient times until today we have built our homes around water. Today, one 
particular type of home site with some unique landscape conditions we encounter is the lakeside home. Typically people who live in these homes do so for two main reasons, for the physical access to the lake and for the natural beauty of the scenery. However, these two ideas can be at odds, and often at the expense of another important aspect of this situation, the environmental concerns. As landscape architects these three ideas are central to anything we design and the successful project will be the one where the right balance of those ideas is found. With that in mind, when this approach is taken with a shoreline enhancement project the results should be a landscape that if functional, beautiful, and sensitive to the environmental concerns of the site.
One particular aspect of site design, function, is typically given predominance with these sites. The physical separation of land and water is of critical concern, but when this alone is the focus the result is a very plain and artificial appearance. A common treatment is to use a concrete or steel “seawall” that provides a durable, permanent separation of the land, often a turfgrass lawn, from the lake. It’s a stark contrast to the more gentle transition of how this occurs in the natural environment. Functionally, this situation works well, and given the right type of home or client a very utilitarian aesthetic might be right, but many clients want something with a little more “natural” beauty. And by building this type of landscape you have essentially eliminated all environmental concerns about the site.
So, what would be a better solution for this situation? Rethinking the “seawall” would be an obvious solution, but rarely can we get involved in a project when a lakeshore is being initially developed, and new ideas often face scrutiny from those regulating these things. Also, most homeowners are not interested in investing their money in demolishing and rebuilding an existing, and perfectly functioning seawall. So, the alternative is what I refer to as “shoreline enhancement”. This involves using plants and other materials to augment the existing seawall to increase the aesthetic and environmental appeal and achieve a better balance of those three design criteria.
Removing an area of turfgrass along the shoreline and replacing it with landscape beds including a variety of plants is the primary focus of shoreline enhancement. This simple change can have many benefits. By doing this you have now greatly improved the beauty of the shoreline by introducing plant materials with a host of ornamental values like colorful flowers and 
swaying grasses, and softened the harsh transition of land to lake with something softer, and closer to the natural condition. And by doing this you begin to address some environmental concerns as well. Densely planted vegetation along a shoreline will act as a filter for rainwater runoff, collecting pollutants from the water in their roots before it reaches the lake. And introducing the right plants will provide food sources to birds, butterflies, caterpillars, and other insects, which themselves also act as food sources, and provide shelter and habitat for those same creatures and other small wildlife. Even the space below the wall, actually within the lake, can be developed and planted with “emergent” vegetation suited for this type of environment that will add even more aesthetic and environmental impact to your shoreline.
If you are a owner of a lakeside home and are interested in shoreline enhancement for your site Mark M. Holeman, Inc. can help craft a project to bring beauty and environmental benefit to your site. These projects often deliver a huge impact on a smaller budget and many times the costs can be offset even further with grant money from local agencies which work to encourage these projects. It’s a great way to gently rework an existing landscape to something with a better balance of site design concerns, and has very real benefits for the health and visual appeal of our lakeshores.