TN Nursery caries a variety of aquatic or shoreline restoration plants. Shoreline restoration plants at the water's edge provide beauty and color to the shoreline environment. Wildlife depends on both live and dead plants for habitat. Dead trees on the shore and logs lying in the water provide perches for Eastern Kingbirds, Belted Kingfishers, Eastern Phoebes, and Green Herons. Floating logs are idling sites for Painted Turtles. The tangle of dead tree branches underwater protects newly spawned fish from predators. Shoreline plants, both dead and alive, help protect the shoreline by absorbing the energy of waves that might otherwise erode the soil.

Unfortunately, decades of traditional lawn management have led to changing conventional ideas about the appearance of the shoreline. Expansive lawns mowed all the way to the water's edges, and no aquatic vegetation are all too often the norm. Landscaping shoreline lots to achieve this ideal has led to a serious loss of natural shoreline habitat and deteriorating quality on thousand of lakes.

Many shoreline property owners now realize that something is missing on their lake or river. They notice fish populations declining. They see fewer frog, and wading birds along the shore. They complain about Canada Geese and muskrats as nuisances. They see more bank erosion, more shoreline heaving, huge trees along the shoreline starting to lean towards their house, and generally less of what attracted them to their shoreline property originally. They spend more time mowing their lawn, painting their shutters, and fighting Nature, than they spend fishing. They have unknowingly created a shoreline environment that is ecologically dysfunctional.

Fortunately, there is a solution to this complicated and disheartening problem. Landscaping for wildlife and water quality, which is also known as “lakescaping”, is the answer to restoring shoreline to a natural state. At the heart of the lakescaping concept is the creation of a buffer zone along the shoreline. A buffer zone is a natural strip of vegetation along at least 75% of a property's frontage that extends 50 feet onto the land, and then out into the water as well.

The goal of creating a buffer zone is to restore the shoreline, both on shore and in the water, with the vegetation that occurred there naturally in the first place. This vegetation includes native trees, bushes, wildflowers, ferns, shoreline plants, vines, grasses, and emergent and submersed aquatic vegetation. The buffer zone restores ecological functions that were reduced or eliminated by traditional lawns planted to the water's edge. With a buffer zone, the shoreline once again becomes important as wildlife habitat for nesting, perching, feeding, and brood-rearing.

A shoreline buffer zone can return many desirable features to your shoreline property and present a seasonal array of colors, textures, aromas, and continual wildlife activity. Lakescaping for wildlife and water quality will enable living at peace with a more natural shoreline, instead of trying to make it conform to traditional landscape ideals that throw the lake ecosystem out of whack.

Flourishing plant and animal communities along the shoreline provide another benefit: good water quality. Native plant communities in the water and on the shoreline filter rainwater and melting snow that drain into the lake for the surrounding watershed. When that water contains pollutants, the vegetation helps purify it.

The nursery that can assist you with your shoreline restoration plants is TN Nursery.