Rain gardens
How bad is runoff? Let me count the ways: it can rip out infrastructure, wash pollutants and (ahem) dog poop into lakes and streams, flood your basement, erode hillsides, and generally make a nasty, expensive mess of things. Rain gardens catch runoff in shallow basins, giving it a chance to sink back down into the earth before it can get into mischief. Native plants are perfect for rain gardens, because their deep root systems direct runoff where it belongs.
The Wisconsin DNR and University of Wisconsin Extension Service have produced a great booklet on building your own rain garden, which also includes some handy plant designs. It’s called “Rain Gardens: A How-to Manual for Homeowners.”
Plants for Stormwater Design: – Will the plant you want for your rain garden be suitable for your conditions? Find out!
Become a Master Rain Gardener! Washtenaw County Water Resources offers an online course, and by the time you’re done, you’ll have built your own rain garden—and qualify for a cool t-shirt.
On the waterfront
When faced with erosion, waterfront property owners typically take the civil engineering solution of installing a hardscape along the boundary between water and land. In doing so, they not only wreck the shore for riparian wildlife, they also send the water’s energy to the next property, effectively outsourcing the erosion to their neighbors. Those neighbors add their own hardscape, and, well, you can see where this is leading.
A natural shoreline of native wetland plants absorbs the water’s energy, like marshes blunt the impact of a hurricane’s storm surge. They also provide beauty and great habitat for creatures above and below the water.
Bonus: natural shorelines also discourage geese from grazing on lawns. Here are some resources to help you plan for a gorgeous, vibrant shoreline.
Natural Shoreline Landscapes on Michigan’s Inland Lakes: A Guidebook—The Michigan State Extension Service published this comprehensive guide for managing a waterfront property, and I would consult the whole 74 pages if I actually had waterfront property to manage. It gently guides the reader away from riprap and lawn-up-to-the-shoreline toward a native-plant buffer zone, which prevents erosion and (bonus) discourages geese.
Wisconsin Native Shoreline Planting Guide – Although focused on healthy lakes, the last resource has designs for six different purposes, only one of which is shoreline specific: lakeshore edge, bird/butterfly, bare soil, low growing, deer resistant, and woodland. Most of the six have regionally native plant lists for both dry-medium and moist-wet soils and include lists of woody plants, grasses & sedges, and wildflowers.
Shoreline Habitat Creation Manual: – This document from “Watersheds Canada” describes the many ways homeowners can protect shoreline habitat for birds, fish, amphibians, and mammals.